If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Websleuths News

On the latest edition of Websleuths Radio we tackle the Rebecca Zahau murder case and the big mistake made in the autopsy report of the Las Vegas shooter.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

00:27FO: Jodi, Detective Flores has the binder with those pictures, and he’s not here in our office right now, but I put a call in to try and find him and get him back here He’s still in town. Would you rather talk to him?
Umm…if you do, you know that’s fine. I’m sure he’d be willing to talk with you again, or would you rather continue talking with me? It’s up to you.

01:01 JA: Umm I… I don’t really have a preference, I guess.

01:14FO: Well, we don’t have unlimited time. You don’t have unlimited time. We need to get you back across the street, and there are other things we need to work on. So, you know, the time is now to decide whether you’re going to talk to me or not and whether you’re going to give the family some relief that I talked to you about.

01:40JA: (Whispers) (Unintelligible)

01:43FO: Well, either you do or you don’t. You know actions…actions speak louder than words at this point.

01:50JA: (Whispers) (Unintelligible)

01:59FO: If you really want to do it, do it. It’s not going to benefit either you or them to wait to do it.

(Silence)

02:33FO: And I don’t know what it is that’s going on inside your head right now. I don’t know whether you’re weighing the odds, umm… you know trying to figure out how to save your own skin here, umm...

02:44JA: (Whispers) I’m not interested in saving my own skin.

02:46FO: Then what are you interested in?

02:52JA: Umm…well, I am definitely interested in giving his family closure. I’m also interested in maybe a little bit of closure for myself. I got a flat tire on the way to his funeral, and I was not able to go. Umm…it was…(unintelligible). My flat (?) was in Sacramento, and it was very early in the morning so there were no tire places open, and I was, and even if I had driven as fast as I could to get there and didn’t get pulled over, I still wouldn’t have made it on time for his family.

03:24FO: Don’t you think that it’s going to make just a little bit of difference inside yourself as far as that closure goes if you know that the family at least has something?

03:38JA: Yeah, if anyone deserves closure anyway it’s that family, not me, but I think that’s kind of why I wanted to umm…see those pictures. I don’t know if it will help or not.

03:52FO: I don’t see how it would help. I think it would, you know if anything, make you more upset. I mean you know what happened. You know how it transpired. You know the end result and what the end result looked like.

04:08JA: Maybe it will help me process, I don’t know.

(Silence)

04:19FO: You can at least, until you get to the point of, you know, you’re processing the pictures and so forth, you can at least talk about the good things that happened that day and what your intentions were. You know maybe you can’t bear to talk about the actual act itself, but you can at least talk about the events that led up to it, happy or sad. There had to have been some happy, because I saw all of those photos.

(Silence)

05:12FO: And if you’re not going to do that today, with me right now, I’m just going to send you back across the street, (sigh) because we’ve been in here for awhile, and I don’t have, you know, the entire day. I guess my patience is running a little thin.

05:40JA: Umm…I have a lot of letters to write…

05:44FO: Mmm hmm.

05:53JA: I think if I can just…Everything is just all jumbled. If I can just get some things on paper, I don’t know.

06:10
(Jodi sighs)

06:15FO: Do you not trust what I’m going to do with this information when you give it?

06:25JA: Well, umm… I don’t know. Well, it’s not that I distrust you, but…and not ‘cause I think you’re not trustworthy. It’s not that.

06:46FO: If you give me a specific message to give to them, I promise you that I will relay it in the way that…in the context of which you put it.

07:08FO: But I can’t do it without any information, without the information that you’re holding. So, therefore, you know, if that’s how we leave it, I’m not going to say anything to them, and they’ll be left, you know, with the thoughts they have right now. If you think you’re feeling grief over this whole incident, think about how they feel. For once, think about somebody else - the turmoil that they’re going through, that that family is going through. Every time you see a family struggling with this they always want to know why. Why was my son’s life taken? Why was my grandson’s life taken?

08:05JA: Everybody wants to know why.

08:06FO: Everybody wants to know why, and maybe you don’t have that why, but you have the events that led up to it, and then they can make their own decision as to why. The time is now. You won’t have another opportunity like this. This is still early. If you want to talk to Detective Flores as opposed to me, you can do that. I just thought it would be easier to talk to a woman who can relate to some of those feelings, but if you want to go back across the street right now just let me know.

09:17JA: I kind of do want to talk to him because he has been in contact with their family…with Travis’ family a lot. I don’t know if that would make any difference, but I know that he already talks to them on a regular basis.

09:28FO: Yeah, and I’m sure that, you know, he has somewhat of a relationship with them. I’ll umm… I had them put in a call so we’ll see if he is…

09:41JA: You know, I’m not trying to stall or anything but I have to go to the bathroom again. Can we go?

09:46FO: Yeah.

09:47JA: Thanks.

09:54
(Jodi & FO leave the room)

11:23
(Jodi enters the room alone and walks over to the table)

11:28
(Jodi hasn’t even sat down yet when she reaches to pick up the tape recorder on the table)

11:28 – 12:10
(Jodi picks up the recorder, sits down, and begins to examine it while still holding it. When the door opens, Jodi is seen moving it to her lap and then moves it back to the table).

12:10DF: Hello, Rachel called me and told me that you wanted to talk to me. I was just on the phone with Travis’ sister and I told her I…

12:17
(Jodi reaches for water bottle and takes a drink)

12:16JA: Which sister?

12:18DF: Samantha.

12:23JA: What did she say?

12:25DF: (Sigh) She has a million and one questions, more questions now than she had before. I don’t have anything to give her, partly because I can’t give certain information yet, but the other of it is because I don’t have a lot of information.

12:50DF: Are you doing okay?

12:52JA: It doesn’t matter how I’m doing.

12:54DF: It does to me.

12:56JA: Thank you, but it doesn’t matter... (crying)

12:56DF: I’ve always been completely honest with you, and I just wish that you could be honest with me.

13:16JA: What matters is how his family is doing, and, of course, I care about how my family is doing just ‘cause I’m the person here that everyone thinks is a bad guy, but it doesn’t mean that my family had anything to do with anything, and it doesn’t mean that they were responsible for anything or that they should suffer at all and it’s, and, of course, I feel his family, and I don’t know them as well, I really don’t even know them at all except for his grandmother.

13:48DF: Yeah. I told you yesterday I’ve been doing this a long time and you’re absolutely right. You know the person’s family who was hurt, they’re obviously hurting, but there’s a second family that hurts as well, and in this case, it’s your family -- your brothers, your sister, your mom and your dad.

14:25JA: (Unintelligible)

14:26DF: Yeah.

14:36 JA: I just wish they wouldn’t hurt. It would be so much easier for me, not that I deserve to have it easy, but…

14:46DF: I don’t think you’re ever going to be able to take that away from them. I think they’re always going to hurt. Now, the only thing that can solve that is time.

14:59JA: You’re right about that.

15:11DF: Rachel said something about you wanted to see some photos, but I don’t think I can show you any more photos.

15:20JA: Why not?

15:23DF: Not just…I don’t like doing that, because something might happen to you. You might… First off, it’s not something I do.

15:38JA: The reason I asked was because I just feel like it might help me piece some things together. Umm…and this is more of a selfish reason because I think it might give me some sense of closure. I know it’s kind of morbid. I don’t even think I really deserve closure. His family does, but I wasn’t able to visit the funeral home and it’s just, and I don’t know, that’s just why…mostly…

16:18DF: What is it that you want to know about the photos? Do you want to see the room? Do you want to see the bathroom or do you want to see him or is it the photos before it happened that you want to see?

16:33JA: I think the photos of after everything.

16:45DF: I won’t show you those. I won’t - not in good conscience. I can’t do that.

16:55JA: Are there…Is there any that you can?

16:59DF: No, I can’t do that.

(DF phone buzzes)

17:09JA: (unintelligible) like before, I mean, I’ve seen plenty of those kinds of photos.

17:15DF: If you want I can describe stuff for you,

17:19JA: Okay.

17:20DF:…because I was there. Those photos will never leave my head. I’m sure they’ll never leave yours either. The one thing you got to remember is by the time he was found, the images that you saw were different from the ones I saw. Things change over time. His body changes after time. We had a difficult time identifying who he was by the time we got there. He wasn’t the same person, so that’s why I don’t want to show you photos.

18:16JA: What about photos of just the room with him not in it? I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t matter.

18:24DF: I don’t have them with me here, but as soon as I get a hold of them. Another detective has them right now.

18:37DF: What is it that you can tell me about that day?

18:47JA: There’s really not much. Things are kind of blurry.

18:52DF: Was he expecting you to show up that day?

18:56JA: He wanted me to come.

18:59DF: But you didn’t want to?

19:00JA: I told him I was going to Utah.

19:06DF: Why did you decide to go then?

19:06
(Jodi takes a drink – plays with bottle)

19:19JA: I didn’t really, I was going to Utah.

(Silence)

19:41
(Jodi hears a “beep” and puts the water bottle down. She turns around and picks up the recorder from the back table)

19:45DF: You can leave it off.

19:49JA: This one still has a full battery in it.

19:52DF: You can leave it off. Just me and you.

20:01JA: I just…I know that you talk to his family and…

20:07DF: Every day.

20:13DF: They can’t believe it. I called them yesterday and told them, and they just can’t believe it.

20:19JA: Who did you talk to?

20:22DF: I talked to both his… actually, I talked to his brother, Steven, first and Samantha, I left her a message. She was off on vacation and his other two brothers, was it Gary and…? I didn’t talk to the other brother, Gary, I talked to…

20:37JA: Mike? That’s his uncle.

20:39DF: He was going to call his little brother and his other sister, and I was planning on calling his aunt today. She lives back in the Midwest.

20:51JA: Which aunt?

20:52DF: I can’t remember her name.

20:54JA: (Jodi gives the name of an aunt, but it is unintelligible)?

20:55DF: No. It’s another name.

20:58JA: Did you talk to this grandmother?

20:59DF: No. Steven said he was going to take care of that, and if she had any questions she could give me call.
She’s been so upset she hasn’t been able to call me yet. Is there something you want me to tell them?

21:28JA: The things that keep coming to my mind wouldn’t help them at all – wouldn’t comfort them. It would just be clichéd meaningless words.

21:49DF: I’ll let you decide what to say and I’ll relay it exactly how you want me to.

21:59JA: Umm…I have an unrelated question real quick.

22:02DF: Sure.

22:03JA: I know… it’s not… I mean Detective Blaney said that…that she doesn’t like me asking them because it makes it look like I’m concerned about trivial things, but I’m only asking because it concerns other people that I care about and…

22:15DF: That’s understandable.

22:16JA: I just …if I just know so I could tell them if I ever talk to them again or relay a message or call them. Last Friday I had a wedding and

22:27DF: Is this the camera?

22:28JA: Yeah, and the only place that those photos are, are on my external drive and on the camera card.

22:36DF: It will be awhile before we get those back.

22:39JA: Okay, but if they can just get to the right person because that’s the
only thing they have for their wedding date.

22:44DF: I’ll be absolutely positive to give those to the right people.

22:48JA: I was going to edit them and make them look really nice but he’s…

22:53DF: They can probably take them and edit the pictures, but who are those two people that those pictures belong to?

23:00JA: Oh. Umm…Brian Nieman is his name.

23:02DF: Okay. All right. Yeah. I was talking to you mom and I think she mentioned something about that.

23:10JA: and also on my external drive as well, maybe my computer and hard drive, too. There were pictures of my little sister and I, and for whatever reason, she’s in some kind of rehab program right now.

23:23DF: New photos?

23:24JA: Yeah, well, pretty recent ones that she had of her prom night and of her and I that we were just goofing off. So they’re her and I together, and my mom was going to send those, and also my little brother. She was going to send some of those, and even if she doesn’t send them she wants them. So I mean, they… I kind of took them for her and so…

23:43DF: I understand. You’re worried about other people right now, but you also need to understand that these people, right now, that stuff is not important to them.

23:55JA: I know.

23:56DF: So I mean that’s good, I mean you’re thinking of them, but they’re not thinking of pictures. They’re not thinking of stuff like that. They’re worried about you.

24:27JA: I just, umm…Well, I’m probably not going to get anything back, but I know that my mom may have mentioned that she likes the way I write and she’s always wanted to know my business, so…

24:40DF: Is that something you want me to give to her?

24:42JA: Umm…I wouldn’t mind if you did. I had something I wouldn’t want her to read otherwise, but
in this circumstance I think she deserves to have every piece of me that she can ‘cause she’s not getting any more.

25:00DF: You’re still here with us.

25:06DF: You’re not going anywhere.

25:10JA: I’m going somewhere (laughs).

25:11DF: Not anytime soon. You’ll still be able to talk to your family. They can talk to you. They’ll be able to visit you.

25:26JA: Do you know what happened to my cash? I heard people got cash on the books there, or on my book or whatever it’s called, so that I can get a few things that I might need there. I don’t know what it would be, but…

25:37DF: I don’t know about the situation here but, once everything gets transferred over to Phoenix, it’s a different story.

25:48JA: So I might not see that again?

25:50DF: No. Any cash that was there is yours. If you had cash in your purse, that’s your money.

25:56JA: I also had cash in my savings.

25:59DF: I don’t think they took any of that. I know it was mentioned that there was some cash that they saw. They just documented it, and left it.

26:15JA: Anyway, I don’t even know…that’s not important. I’m just…

26:18DF: No, it’s important to you, and I understand that.

26:21DF: I mean there are things that I would think of if I were in your situation. I’d want to take care of the people who loved me and that I love and make sure that everything was set, because certain things you won’t be able to do anymore.

26:41JA: Like hug my family.

26:43DF: No, you’ll be able to.

26:46JA: Well, if they come visit, it’s like behind a glass, you know?

26:49DF: No, it’s not.

26:50JA: It isn’t? Here?

26:52DF: No, in Arizona.

26:55JA: They’re not going to come to Arizona.

26:57DF: I guarantee you they’ll come to Arizona and see you.

27:01JA: When I moved away, they never came to see me and I was gone for 10 years.

27:07DF: From my understanding, some of that was because of you.

27:12JA: I had a house with a free bedroom and a bed and a pool and everything you could want and they never came to visit me once. It was my first home. I’m sorry, this is all stupid and it’s irrelevant. I’m just saying they’re not gonna’ come to Arizona, and they shouldn’t have to come to Arizona, and I don’t think I want them to anyway. So yeah, when you say there are certain things that I won’t do anymore, I know that’s really sinking in quite a bit.

27:46DF: Of course they will. You don’t think your mom will come visit you? She will. Who do you think is worrying about you more right now? I think your mom and dad are worried more than anything.

27:59JA: My dad went to the hospital yesterday because he was having a panic attack,

28:03DF: Yeah.

28:08JA: and he gets these things where they just can’t get his heart rate down, and it’s not…I mean I haven’t really been the cause of any of that prior. It just happened, but yesterday I had everything to do with it. It doesn’t even matter. I mean he’s had a long life. Every breath he takes right now is because of modern technology. It’s bought him a lot of time, but

28:43JA: I’m so sorry for Travis’ family.

28:49DF: Well, they’re asking for answers. What can you give them? What do you want me to tell them?

29:04DF: I will tell them anything that you want me to.

29:14DF: And it’s not gonna’ solve anything for them. It’s not going to fill that void of curiosity, but I think at least it would be a start.

29:30DF: What is it you want to say?
I will call her as soon as I’m done talking to you.

29:37
(Jodi tears off some toilet paper and wipes her nose)

29:41JA: Umm…one thing you could say, and this has nothing to do with his death, but it’s something they may want to see. Umm…two nights ago, it took me 5 ½ hours, but I posted a 45 minute video on You Tube of him doing a training in San Bernardino. Umm…

30:00DF: Where did you post that?

30:02JA: On You Tube. If you go to You Tube, it takes some time, a couple hours to get it up, and you know once it’s processed, they have to go through some processing thing, but if you type in Travis Alexander – System’s Training, it should come up.

30:22DF: What is it again?

30:24JA: Travis Alexander and then a dash – that’s space and then a dash

30:32DF: Space and then just a dash?

30:33JA: Yeah, and then Assistant’s Training

30:39JA: An apostrophe and then an s. I don’t know if that makes a difference. That’s exactly what I titled it. I think his friend, Chris Hughes, gives about a 6 ½ minute introduction to it, and then Travis gets up there and gives a 30 minute training, and he talks a lot about what’s in the introduction to his book. He talks about his grandfather, Vic.

30:59DF: He loves his grandparents.

31:00JA: Yeah.

31:01DF: You know he still loves his grandparents. He loves his parents and his family, and he and I have similar beliefs, and, you know, we know he’s okay now.

31:14JA: I know and I know that he’s okay and that he’s in a good place and I know that that doesn’t make it any better here for anybody.

31:23DF: There’s always that but. I think he’s waiting for you to give relief to other people who are still here with us. You know you have to. You can’t leave it unfinished. It’s the last piece of this puzzle.

31:53 DF: It is completely up to you, Jodi.

32:02DF: I told you yesterday I have details on how things happened. There’s ways to figure it out. What the biggest question everybody always asks is, why? It’s the biggest question of our life.

32:23JA: It is.

32:24DF: Why are we here? Why do we suffer? Why do we go through the things that we do?

32:31JA: Why do we hurt each other?

32:37DF: The biggest reason I have ever found is for us to have happiness.

32:45JA: (Crying) I think you’re right.

32:37DF: Whatever situation that we have, no matter where we are at, who we are, and what our situation is, we can at least try to be happy.

00:26DF: Do you want to talk about what happened that day? I’ve got the images in my head, and I can explain whatever it is you want about what I saw when I went there. What I can’t do is…I can’t show you pictures.

00:57DF: What time did you get there that day?

01:08DF: The pictures that I have, the first ones show you there at about 1:45 or so. Was it soon before that, or had you been there for awhile already?

01:28 DF: I know he has roommates are off of work during that time and don’t come home until about 6:30 or 7:00, and they don’t even talk to him really.

DF: It just seems like they just kinda’ rent rooms. They don’t really socialize and kinda’ stick to themselves, especially his new roommate.

01:56 JA: Who is that?

02:00DF: Did you know his new roommate?

02:04JA: I only knew Zach was there.

02:05DF: Zach and Enrique was the other one.

02:08JA: I think I saw Enrique at his funeral services, or I mean his memorial services, but I didn’t meet him or I didn’t know him.

02:15DF: Mexican guy,

02:17JA: Kinda short

02:18DF: quiet, kind of reserved.

02:21JA: His other roommate, Dustin, who was, I think, was in the room that shared Travis’ wall and John Hepworth who had the corner room.

02:31DF: There was only Zach and Enrique there.

02:33JA: Yeah, they had moved out.

DF: And those guys, we have all of their things as well, so, I mean they’re asking, too. Zach is going through so much right now. He’s like, “How could we have not known that he was there for days?” He racks his brain. He calls me 2-3 times a week, you know, just goes over and over in his mind. He has no idea.
He was the one who first went into the room and found him.

03:14JA: He’s the one?

03:15DF: Mmm hmm.

03:18JA: I’ve heard so many rumors about how that happened.

03:21DF: Yeah. Other friends came over looking for him, and they went into the room. There’s a few of them, they came out, and you know, they’ll never be the same. When you see something like that, it’s difficult, especially when it’s somebody you know, somebody you love. I deal with it all the time so it doesn’t bother me as much.

03:51JA: You must have to remain detached quite a bit.

03:55DF: Mmm hmm. You know who I usually get attached to… is the people I’m talking to. To you! You’re the one I’m going to remember. I’ll remember him but I didn’t know him. I will remember you. I mean we’ve talked so much since that day, over the phone and here, and I’ll probably talk to you some more later, when we get back to Arizona, whenever you go, I don’t know.

04:43JA: (Whispers) I just don’t want to hurt anybody.

04:46DF: I know. I know.

04:54JA: I don’t think I can avoid it though. (Jodi wipes her eyes with her toilet paper)

04:57DF: Everybody’s hurting already. There’s nothing else you could say or do that could help that except for maybe an explanation of why it happened or how it happened. (Sigh) It’s not my job to…

05:14
(Jodi picks up her water bottle and takes a drink)

05:14DF: …have an opinion of you or your personality or character. It’s my job to sit here and talk to you and get the facts of the incident and present those to the court and whoever else needs to know.

05:45DF: Do you want to try to open up and talk about what happened that day, because I’m ready?

05:52JA: I do but I don’t think I’m ready. I mean, there’s not much to say.

06:00 JA: I just don’t…

06:02DF: Do you want to start, and we can stop at any time you want?

06:08 DF: Fill in some details. This is what I do to assure that you’re not just saying you did something just to cop out, because there are certain details that only I know and the person who did this knows. Nobody else does. I use this information to confirm what I suspected. So if you can just start and give me some details as confirmation, then that will be fine, and if you want, we can continue at another time.

07:03JA: (Whispers) Part of me just really wants to.

07:05DF: Well, then let’s just start, because I know that part that really wants to is that part inside you that’s telling you to do what’s right.

07:25DF: We don’t have to go over details, all the details.

07:34
(Jodi is sitting on the chair with both legs up on the chair bent, with knees close to her chest, feet on the front of her chair. She lowers her head to her arm which is resting across her knees and appears to be crying)

07:42DF: Why did you go there that day, Jodi? Why did you show up that morning?

07:51
(Jodi wipes her nose and eyes with her toilet paper)

07:57DF: I have questions, too. Were you gonna’ try to convince him not to go to Mexico or were you gonna’…

08:04JA: Oh, no! (Sounds like a half cry half laugh exclamation)

08:05DF: Try to convince him to go on a trip with you, or…

08:09JA: No, he would never not go to Mexico. I would never want him to not go. He was going to see Chichen Itza. It’s on the list of 1,000 places.

08:17DF: It’s one of the things I want to do in my lifetime.

08:20JA: Yeah. It’s an important part of our history both in the church and our heritage.

08:30DF: That’s where my people come from.

08:33JA: Yeah.

08:37DF: So why were you there that day? Please tell me. Did you just miss him?
Did he call you? Did he miss you? What was it?

(Silence)

08:59DF: The only other explanation that I can think of is that you went there for one purpose, and that’s to hurt him. If that’s the case and that’s the truth then that’s what you need to say.

(Silence)

09:23DF: If you want me to call and tell his family that you’re sorry and that you apologize for what happened, I can do that, whatever you want. This is your time right now. I flew up here for a lot of different reasons, and of them, the main reason was to sit down with you here to talk to you about what happened. I did it yesterday, and now I’m here today, but the time is limited.

10:12JA: There’s so many things that I want to say.

10:16DF: Start with one. Start with the beginning.

(Jodi puts hands over her face)

DF: Was it a last minute change from your trip to come down, go down to Arizona? I bet you were going through your head, should I just go or should I just keep going to Utah.

(Jodi stares off)

10:50DF: It’s only an additional 300 miles from where you were, so…

(Silence)

11:14DF: Jodi, your time is running out. I’m not going to be able to talk to you any more, and I want to. Once you get into the system, I’m not going to be able to talk to you anymore.

11:42DF: You left so many questions unanswered for me and for his family and for your family.

11:56DF: You were there that day, weren’t you?

(Silence)

12:05DF: Were you guys alone?

12:17DF: Can you answer that for me?

12:23DF: Were you guys alone.

(Silence)

12:42JA: Sorry. There’s so much that I just want…

DF: Answer that for me.

12:55
(Jodi throws toilet paper in the trash can

13:00 DF: Should I be looking for somebody else. Was there anybody else with you besides you and Travis?

13:10DF: Are you protecting somebody else?

13:27DF: Jodi…

13:28JA: I’m sorry. I’m just… I just don’t know what to do. I’m trying to just figure it out.

13:38DF: I’m right here. I’m right in front of you. This is what you need to focus on right now.

14:01JA: (Whispers) I’m just trying to think here.

14:03DF: You had Rachel call me for a reason, and that’s why I came back here.

14:10JA: I had her call you about those photos – but I also thought because you communicate with the family more regularly. I just don’t know what to say. They deserve to have some peace.

14:31DF: Well, do you want me to ask you the question that they’ve been asking me? Maybe you can answer it? It’s the same question I’ve been asking you. Was there somebody else with you? That’s the #1 question his whole family has been asking. What do I tell them?

14:57DF: What do you want me to say to them, because the only answer I can give them is I don’t have any evidence to show that there was anybody else there. That’s another way of saying, I don’t know for sure, and that’s absolutely true. I don’t know if somebody else was there with you.

15:32DF: Please give me that at least -- for them.

15:47DF: You know, if there was, you don’t have to say a name. It’s a simple yes or no.

(Jodi has head in hands – looking up at the ceiling)

16:03DF: Yes or no, Jodi.

16:09DF: Look at me. Please. They want to know. Was somebody else there with you?

16:31JA: I’m just trying to think.

16:50DF: You keep fighting it.

16:49JA: What would happen to me today, and from here on out, if I just told you every single detail right now and I gave you a confession?”

17:10DF: Nothing else changes. It just speeds up the process.

17:19JA: In what way? Do I go to Arizona faster?

17:22DF: Yeah. The process in Arizona speeds up.

17:28JA: So if I maintain my innocence, then I stay here longer?

17:32DF: No, no you don’t really stay here longer. It speeds up the process in Arizona.

17:35JA: Like the trial and all that jazz?

17:41DF: Do you want to put your family through a trial? That’s another question you have to ask yourself.

17:52JA: No. Can I do it all without a trial or does there have to be a trial?

17:56DF: That’s something you can discuss with the prosecutor. I’m on the phone with him pretty much every day giving him updates.

18:07JA: What’s his name?

18:08DF: His name is Juan Martinez. He’s the #1 Prosecutor in Phoenix, well, at least in my book he is.

18:26JA: (Unintelligible)

18:27DF: Yes.

18:37JA: I wonder if I should just get a lawyer first.

18:41DF: That’s completely up to you

18:44JA: I know that you can’t stay here forever and you need to do back. If I get one, will you be able to still talk to me afterward or does everything just stop or what?

18:53DF: I’ll tell you exactly what a lawyer’s going to tell you to do. He’s gonna’ say, Nope!

18:57JA: Nope on what?

18:58DF: No more contact. She had her chance
You had your chance to talk to her. It’s over.

19:05JA: Well, I mean, I just would just want his advice. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he umm…that I’m going to take his advice nor does it mean that…you know…

19:16DF: That’s completely up to you, Jodi.

19:17JA: …sitting in a cell somewhere not saying anything is not going is going to help me.

19:19DF: I can’t advise you either way, but what I can advise you on is the truth. The details of the case that you have in your head that you can give me will allow me to verify the information that I have to make sure that I’m looking at the right person and to verify that nobody else was there with you.

20:03DF: Like I said yesterday, there is no doubt what happened there that day. There’s a couple of details that I don’t have - how it started and why it started.

20:27DF: Like I said before, if you can provide me with just a few, I can at least relay to the family. That would be fine with me.
We don’t have to go through all the details. Lets at least start.

20:55
(Jodi has her head down on table).

20:58DF: Let’s start right here right now. If there’s a question that I ask you that you feel that you don’t want to answer, you can say, “No, I don’t want to answer that right now.”

21:00JA: (Unintelligible)

21:54DF: Do you want to move forward or not?

21:57JA: Yes. I do. I just…

21:59DF: You do?

22:00JA: I do. I do, but…

22:03DF: Well, let’s do it.

22:04JA: I just…I know. I’m not trying to stall, I’m not trying to waste your time.

23:27DF: I don’t want to push you. It’s your own free will. That’s one thing we have is our own free will.

(Silence)

24:08JA: It’s kind of…it’s all blurry. It really is blurry.

24:29DF: What went through your mind after it happened?

24:35JA: (Whispers) Fear.

24:37DF: A lot of fear? What did you think when you were driving away.

24:44JA: (Whispers) I was scared.

24:53JA: (Whispers) Unintelligible.

24:58DF: I can imagine what you were going through waiting for it to finally come out.

25:06JA: Waiting for what to come out? (Jodi is no longer whispering)

25:08DF: The news that he was no longer with us. You must have been going through Hell. Every day that went by, what were you thinking?

25:30JA: (Whispers) I was scared.

25:33DF: What was that?

25:34JA: I was scared. I’m sorry.

25:36DF: That’s okay

25:41DF: You just went on with your day like nothing happened.

25:45JA: I had to.

25:46DF: You had to. Did you tell anybody what had happened? That must have been hard.

26:10JA: It’s all a blur. Can I please see those photos?

26:13DF: As soon as they get back. Those detectives went to Reading to go pick up the rental car that you had that day and they took the photos.

26:26JA: There’s probably something in the rental car.

26:29DF: Like what

26:30JA: Maybe blood. I don’t know.

26:34DF: In the trunk? In the back seat?
That’s what we’re going to look for, so...

26:41JA: I was just thinking maybe the handles, locks, steering wheel, things like that, things that get touched.

26:48DF: Is that what was going through your head when you left? What did I leave behind? What did I touch?

26:55JA: No.

26:57DF: What was going through your head? (Unintelligible)

27:15JA: A little bit of a survival instinct but mostly just fear.

27:28DF: Were you worried that his roommates would get home soon?

27:38DF: You didn’t think about that?

27:49DF: That’s the first thing I was thinking about was, when she left here, she barely missed his roommates, or maybe his roommates came home and just didn’t hear her.

28:07JA: Did they hear anybody at all in the house?

28:10DF: No. They saw things which were unusual.

28:13JA: Like what?

28:16DF: They saw his CTR ring and his watch on the kitchen counter and they thought that was odd. He never leaves town without those.

28:23JA: No, He always leaves those there unless he’s sleeping then he takes those things and puts them on.

28:29DF: There were clues here and there but they just went on with their day like nothing had happened without even asking questions. They knew that he was going on a trip but they didn’t know what day.

28:42JA: (Unintelligible) Tuesday

28:44DF: Tuesday, that following week.

28:47JA: That’s right.

28:51:DF: (unintelligible) Monday. All those little things that they talk about now, Zach is killing himself. I don’t know how I did not see this. Why didn’t I just go check on him? Why didn’t I just follow my instinct and go look?

29:22JA: Travis didn’t always bond with his roommates. He did with some. He bonded with Aaron, even though he had a low tolerance (unintelligible). He bonded pretty well with his friend Josh (unintelligible) back in California now.

29:34DF: He wasn’t too close with Zach or Enrique.

29:37JA: No, or his previous roommates. I don’t know…

29:40DF: It seemed to have been just people who rent rooms out from him there. They don’t become friends. They have their own lifestyles and they go on.

29:52JA: Yeah, his rules were LDS standards (unintelligible as music begins to end video)

00:52DF: You don’t remember? Just trying to drive and get as much distance as you could?

01:04JA: Umm…

01:08DF: How long were you in the house after it happened? I know you tried to clean yourself up and clean up what you could.

01:22JA: Huh uh…I wasn’t…

01:23DF: It didn’t take too long, but you did. Why did you throw the camera in the washing machine? We found blood in the downstairs bathroom where somebody had tried to wash their hands. There’s blood on the outside of the washing machine. There’s little things that give us clues to what you were doing afterwards? Do you remember those things?

01:59JA: Huh uh…No.

02:00DF: You remember some though. What was your intention going there that day?

(Silence)

02:13
(A sigh is heard – possibly Jodi)

02:24DF: What was the purpose of the visit, the same as before?

(Silence)

02:40JA: I’m just starting to remember. I’m just trying to remember that week, that whole week, and the week prior had a lot to do with it… the weekend or Friday night prior, I think.

02:51DF: Did you have plans on going down there or, I know you said he had called and wanted you to come down. At what point did you decide, Okay, I’m going?

03:02JA: He always was like, I don’t want to say meddling, but he was always like more concerned than I felt he needed to be about my finances, and he’s like, “Well, how can you make a road trip when you’re this that and that,” you know..

03:20DF: Well, he expected everybody to be like he is.

03:23JA: (Laughs). He did. He really did.

03:27DF: He expected that, Hey, if you go on a road trip you better be thinking about this and that and…

03:32JA: There were so many times that I just threw my responsibilities to the wind and went on road trips with him, because I am a little irresponsible when it comes to that. It’s not just because it was with him, it was because it was the traveling, and umm… you know…

03:45DF: When he leave, he usually makes sure everything is planned out and...

03:48JA: and that he has enough money for it (laughs).

03:52DF: And you just kind of take off sometimes.

03:54JA: Yeah, I guess…

03:55DF: You’re a very, very free spirit

03:58JA: and it’s not…

03:58DF: ...and I’ve known that from the beginning. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s not so good.

04:03JA: What gives you the indication like when you say you know that from the beginning?

04:07DF: From talking to you, talking to people who know you. They’re just like, “Ah, that’s just Jodi,” you know.

04:15JA: I am. I’m spacey… I’m just….

04:21JA: Umm…

04:21DF: When you want to go do something, you just go do it and you’ll deal with the consequences later.

04:26JA: Yeah.

04:35DF: When did you go decide to go visit him? At what point? Were you already on the road or was it from here? Did you already know you were going to visit him when you left here?

04:49JA: Umm…

(Puts head in hands – bends head)

04:57JA: Umm…

04:58DF: I’ve done that before. Sometimes I just leave and, you know what, I’m going to go visit this person while I’m on the way.

05:18JA: (Unintelligible. Jodi is fidgety and mumbles something…)

05:32JA: Umm…you know…

05:38JA: Go ahead.

05:39DF: Did you see any of his roommate’s cars out in the driveway when you left? That part just bothers me, because it was so close to the time when one of the roommates came home, and I just…I’m thinking maybe you were still in the house when he was there.

05:58JA: No. Umm…No, I was in the driveway.

06:03DF: You were in the driveway? They would have seen the car then, right?

06:06JA: Yeah. I know my space was always right behind Travis’ car and he parked in the… he has a 3-car garage and he took the middle space, and one of his roommates…

06:13DF: The Prius?

06:14JA: Yeah, the Prius or his BMW before that, and then there was like a smaller, little space but it was enough for a car, but it was always jammed with junk from his roommates.

06:23DF: Yeah, I saw that.

06:24JA: He was very much … he didn’t save stuff, you know. He had so much storage space. He was so generous whenever he let me store all my stuff there, because I went from a house to a room and so I had artwork, some of my paint, and art supplies, photos, books and books and books and books --so many books. Some of them weren’t even mine. They belonged to my friend, Matt. I was renting that car yesterday because I was taking a trip to Monterey and umm…

06:57 DF: To go visit Matt?

06:58JA: Yeah, I was gonna’ drop off some books to him that I’ve had for years. We dated like 8 years ago, and we’re still friends, so umm….all his books somehow I ended up keeping and some were mine, some were like esoteric and spiritual kind of books and I’m probably not going to read now because they’re just so out there.

07:16DF: I know. I’m sure they’re going to get them back to you.

07:20JA: (Sighs)

07:21JA: and then some photos, also, too. Darryl, who was another guy I dated after Matt that we bought the house together, and kitchen supplies. Darryl paid for so much when I was there, and he footed the bill at Costco, so I had umm…They said that they took knives out of my car. Umm…

07:38DF: I don’t even know whose they are, you know.

07:40JA: Oh, they’re Darryl’s and…

07:41DF: Okay.

07:40JA: they’ve been in storage for years, just collecting dust.

07:44DF: That’s good to know that they’re his.

07:46JA: Yeah, and like they were all his, maybe one might have been mine, but like, I just…I think they were Darryl’s, and so there’s those and a bunch of kitchen supplies and pictures of him and his son mostly when we used to go to 49’er games One time we just went on camping trip.

08:00DF: So the car you had driven there was a rental car?

08:03JA: Yeah.

08:04 DF: The Ford Focus?

08:05JA: Oh!

08:06DF: That’s the car…

08:07JA: Oh! I thought you…

08:08DF: …they’re gonna’ go pick up, the Ford Focus.

08:09JA: Oh! Yeah.

08:10DF: I know they were gonna’ rent you another car, but then something happened with that first car. Either you didn’t like it or…

08:17JA: Oh, it was red, and I thought … ‘cause I always hear that you don’t drive a red car ‘cause I would never buy a red car, and, it was fine. It was a Ford Focus, too. Umm…

08:26DF: And you got the other car you said, the white one…

08:27JA: I said, “Do you have one with a more neutral color?” ‘cause I was like you always get pulled over and you get tickets. You know I don’t know if that’s true.

08:33DF: That’s not true.

08:33JA: …it’s just what I’ve been told since I…

08:35DF: It’s just that a lot of people that have red cars like to go fast. It’s a personality thing. It’s not because of the car color.

08:44JA: I just (unintelligible) it’s more noticeable (unintelligible).

08:48DF: I know Travis doesn’t look his doors when he’s home. Was the door open when you got there, or did you have to go through the garage, or how did you get inside? Did you knock? Everybody says he leaves his doors open when he’s home. He trusts everybody.

09:09JA: Umm…have you ever seen the movie, the Secret?

09:12DF: I don’t think so.

09:13JA: It’s kind of…if you’re familiar with the whole Law of Attraction kind of thing like the way you think you become or ran your life. He felt that if you lock your doors, then what are you telling the universe, what are you telling the ether out there and this and that, I need to lock my door for a reason.

09:29DF: Yeah, I wanna’ be safe.

09:30JA: Yeah, I wanna’ be safe, which also gives the impression that well, there’s somebody that can hurt me, so, and by trusting you know …

09:39DF: He was a very, very trusting person, and that’s what made him who he is.

09:46DF: Also, comes from a different kind of background and have a different type of philosophy.

I used to go to sleep at night and I would hear gunshots (unintelligible), not that neighborhood, but our neighborhood neighbored another neighborhood that wasn’t that great, and gunshots carried and there …’cause Salinas is (Unintelligible) and there are a lot of fields, and I used to think that there were hunters in the fields with their dogs catching animals or something, but they’re all just gangs. I’m sorry, I’m not trying…

10:23DF: That’s okay. I’ve noticed that when I talk to you, you kind of go off sometimes.

10:28JA: Travis used to be like, “Get to the point!” Get to the point. And he…and that made me kind of mad. He had a little bit of a double standard of that ‘cause if you’ve ever, if you ever see him train or talk, ask any of the leaders in Prepaid Legal, he is notorious for going too long.

10:44DF: Mmm Hmm.

10:45JA: Umm…his friend, Dave Hall, in Utah cuts him off and he got mad at him once because he went 5 minutes over and he was, and he just talks and talks and talks, and I said, You know, “You’re kind of long winded yourself.”

10:56DF: Well, he had a future in that. You know that’s what…

10:59JA: Yeah.

11:00DF: …he wanted to do, and he was good at it.

11:02JA: He was so good.

(Sighs heard)

11:08JA: He talks about things of more substance and I just ramble.

11:18DF: So was the door unlocked when you got there?

11:26DF: Did you… you went through the door or the garage? I know a lot of his friends have the key code for the garage, and he doesn’t keep that a secret either.

11:34JA: Umm…

11:36DF: I got that from several different friends.

11:43JA: Yeah, 0817.

11:53DF: Was he expecting you?

11:58JA: (Jodi sighs)

12:07DF: Yes?

12:09DF: Did you surprise him? I know he was always happy to see you.

12:18JA: (Jodi bows her head, covers her eyes/face with her hands)

12:22DF: What you guys had was not wrong, Jodi.
In going over all his stuff, he was always happy to see you.

12:42JA: (Jodi still has her hands covering her eyes/face and lets out a giggle)

He told me this time when … ‘cause I was in his ward boundary, so uh…one of my roommates went to his church, and they were to meet at some church activity and Travis was getting a ride, when he said his friend, Katy Barnes, was in the backseat. He was in another seat. There were two people in the front I guess they were all going to squeeze in and go to this church activity, and they were swinging by to pick up Amy, (Jodi laughs) my roommate, and I wasn’t there, I don’t think…(Unintelligible)

But he said he wasn’t doing much. He must have been on his phone or something texting, but he said they parked and he looked up and it was my house and he was like, “What are we doing here?” (Jodi laughs) and he freaked out! I started laughing so hard when he told me that story, and they’re like, “We’re getting Amy, she’s going with us.” “Oh, okay,” and he just kind of sat there twiddling his thumbs and they got Amy and she left.

13:37DF: Was that after you guys broke up?

13:38JA: Oh, yeah, because by the time I lived in that house we weren’t together…

13:40DF: Yeah, that’s right.

13:42JA: It was just funny because it just weirded him out. I don’t know what reminded me of that just now. You said something…

13:48DF: He was happy to see you.

13:49JA: Yeah. I don’t think he would… he would probably have been…it would have been awkward if he had been…because we kept…

13:54DF: You guys had a different kind of relationship. You guys were happy to see each other but for some reason he couldn’t outwardly show it in public.

14:02JA: He umm…

14:03DF: He was afraid of his image and to him his image was everything.

14:09JA: He told me on several occasions it saddened him and it bothered him. He had two friends in particular that gave him a very hard time about our friendship, and that was Chris and Sky. Umm, but I think they did it out of concern for his …his future…umm…like his marital status. Umm… yeah, why him and I continued (unintelligible) we were both just postponing what we should be focusing on instead.

14:38DF: Well, you’re living life. God is what you make of it. It’s not set in stone.

JA: Yeah, I think you’re right. We just didn’t have our priorities in the right place.

DF: I know the church has a general plan. You go if you’re a guy, you go on a mission, you come back, you find a girl, you get married, you start having kids and start contributing to society and to your church.

14:59JA: Yeah, that’s really not that…

15:03DF: You…you came into something…I don’t know whether you came in with both feet or you still had one foot out but it’s a whole different society in that church.

15:14JA: I…

15:15DF: It’s an all or nothing…

15:16JA: It is! It is…and I think that’s just because the church actually lives their standards

15:20DF: And that’s what people struggle with
They have the utmost standards, and you look around and there’s not one person in that church in those pews who doesn’t’ need to be there, and if they were perfect, they wouldn’t have to go, and sometimes I think it’s a façade. I know. Travis kept trying to live up to those standards, but he’s a human being and he’s… both of you are mortal and you have free will and that’s that. Sometimes I think maybe he put too much pressure on himself to be perfect or to at least portray himself to be perfect.

16:24DF: And that’s maybe why something like this happens. Things get way out of hand.

16:30JA: I just… I… You know I’m not an evil person

16:35DF: I know you’re not.

16:39JA: but I’ve always had…I’m not a promiscuous person. Umm…

16:45DF: Something attracted you guys to each other.

16:47JA: Yeah, and I there was also I already knew him well. I knew him through and through. I loved him and I cared about him. I knew we weren’t going to get married so I just…

16:59DF: How did you know you weren’t going to get married?

17:01JA: Umm…A couple of reasons.

17:05DF: It’s like oil and water? You guys just don’t mix?

17:08JA: Oh, we mixed really well for a time but I think when I discovered his ways last year it was so hard but… umm...

17:18DF: What ways were those?

17:20JA: Umm he just didn’t seem like husband material but it didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be in the future it just meant that… umm…something that Chris & Sky said to me back in January of 2007 really stuck and I said, Do you want to be like Deanna and wait six years?

17:35DF: Yeah.

17:37JA: They made jokes saying, “If you wait six years, you can get free breast implants,” because he bought her breast implants at one point. And then they’re like, and then he’ll really (Unintelligible) you know, just all these things. And I was like, What? Why would they say these things? Anyway…That one part stuck, though, and I felt that, you know, women have, not all women, you know, not Mimi, and not certain other women, but most women just fall all over themselves for Travis because he’s nice, and he seems like the whole package.

18:07DF: I think Mimi kinda’ saw through everything. There are some people out there they can see through stuff

18:JA: I was um. I kinda’ did too. Like I had never been pursued by a person like that. Umm…but at the same time I saw… I’d like to say like Mimi saw through this but I saw beneath that and through that. Like he wrote that thing on his bog the Goal from Within, and I really did see like inside he was an amazing person. He was a good person. He was a generous person. He gave so much and he…

18:43DF: Well, maybe you chose to actually look past that first level. Somebody like Mimi looks past that first level and sees that there’s something I don’t like already and I’m not going to look any further. You, on the other hand,

18:45JA: She spends a lot of time at the Temple so I think… I’ve never been endowed. I’ve never been through the Temple but from what I understand I think that’s such a sacred place and mediating there and being there will help to give you further insight about where just you as a person are supposed to make a move on a certain decision in your life. So maybe that just wasn’t for her. I also was thinking after the fact I didn’t get a chance to discuss this with him. I didn’t know she was going to Cancun, and I didn’t know that she flat out told him no, but I thought...

19:26DF: So that’s completely out of the theory that you went there to convince him to not go.

19:33JA: Oh, yeah. No. Not at all. Not at all.

19:36DF: ‘Cause that’s the first theory that was thrown out there was she was jealous. She knew that he was going to Cancun with this other girl and it was just jealousy.

19:46JA: I never…I asked him at one point after I moved. I was like, “Hey, who are you taking to Cancun by the way?” I knew it wasn’t…at one point there was a girl named Brenda who in … she wasn’t actually involved, and she was in the business and she saw me at the memorial and she’s like, “Now, wasn’t he going to take you to Cancun?” and that was like…We found out about Cancun a year prior umm…right about the time we broke up so I never really assumed that I had a ticket there, and, you know, all those things went on. It was just never discussed. So there was never any discussion.

20:19DF: That never went through your head then.

20:20JA: Yeah. There was never a discussion that I was going to Cancun. Not on that trip. Not with him. Maybe sometime in the future, some other time with somebody else, but no, so that was not an issue.

20:28DF: What about the trip of him coming up to you, come visit you? Was that something that was planned or was that something that…?

20:34JA: Yeah, it was supposed…

20:34DF: Because I wasn’t even sure that that was true.

20:37JA: No. No. He was supposed to come twice. He was gonna’ maybe come up as… and I kinda’ like was hoping he would come by March, I’m sorry, May 24th, because I was singing the National Anthem at the races and I thought… I just... it’s part of one of my goals for this year was one of my fears to overcome was being in front of large crowds or public speaking, um…so

20:58DF: You have anxiety with crowds?

20:59
(Jodi is talking really fast during this!)

20:59JA: Yeah. There were three fears: one was handguns, which was one of the reasons I got a gun. There was this huge (unintelligible) in town who said he would take me out and go target practicing, and I went to the sporting goods store several times to see what he had, and they were all in the $500-$600 range for the kind that I want, so they were too expensive, but then there was this one it was cheap, it was $100 and some dollars and I said, All right, let’s do it. So I put my money down and got my little 10 day background check and all that, so…then I got it and I was happy, you know. Umm…and then the third one was skydiving. So I was going to do that sometime this year, but he wasn’t able to make it up for the… he was scared to tell me that, too. He was like, “I know you get really upset...”

21:38DF: Why was he scared?

21:39JA: Not scared, umm… hesitant…

21:40:DF: He didn’t want you to be upset.

21:41JA: He didn’t want to hurt my feelings, and he told me that. He was on the phone in early May ‘cause I had known about that I was going to sing about 8 weeks prior, about 8 weeks prior… yeah… cause I had approached the guy at the state… down by the Purple Plum which is the one by middle (unintelligible). He works at the gas station area.

21:58DF: I ate there this morning.

21:58JA: Oh, really? It’s petty good food.

22:01DF: You used to work there, didn’t you?

22:02JA: Yeah. They’re good people.

22:04DF: I went to go eat there and I couldn’t get it out of my mind, Jodi used to work here, constantly thinking about you, because of this.

22:18JA: It was a good place to be. I worked there twice actually, when I was 18 or no, my dad closed his restaurant when I was 16 or 17 and that’s when I was a server there, and being a server in a restaurant is probably one of the best positions because you tend to make a little more money than the other positions.

22:33DF: Yeah. Tips.

22:34JA: It’s all contingent, but you know generally it works out in your favor.

22:37DF: You’ve got that personality that people want to tip you.

22:42JA: Yes.

22:44DF: So when he didn’t come up. was there an issue with that? Did you talk about that?

22:47JA: Umm… well he put it so delicately that I couldn’t be mad. I was sad but I wasn’t mad or anything. He said, he’s like, I’m just not sure. H said, “There’s a lot of stress going on. There’s a lot of things right now, you know, this and that stuff going on,” and he’s like, “I’ve been hesitating to tell you, but it looks like I might not be able to make it up there to watch you sing, and I’ve been scared to tell you that,” and I was like, “Aw….” you know. He says it, and he taught me this, his technique, he says it in a way to disarm you first, to where you’re just like, Oh, now, you know, like reverse psychology, sort of. So he said that, and I could really tell that he really was concerned that he would hurt my feelings.

23:24DF: Is that when you decided or he decided to come invite you up?

JA: Uh, no. No, not at all, ‘cause he never...He didn’t invite me until he found out I was going on a road trip. But, then he’s like, he’s all, “Definitely the first week of June.” He’s all “probably before I go to Cancun,” and so um…as that week got closer you know, he was like…”look”…We had a big fight somewhere around then.

23:53DF: Mmm hmm.

23:54JA: Umm…I don’t remember the exact timeline but it was in late May, and…

24:03DF: Was that one of the e-mails that you sent him, or?

24:07JA: Which…? Oh…

24:07DF: the large e-mail…the…your relationship and…

24:11JA: (Jodi speaks very fast during this response)
Oh, just how I think that… Yeah, ‘cause I just could tell, uh…Oh, because I edited and I did all the editing and the grammar and spellings, he’s not a very good speller, that umm…on his…on his first chapter of his book, and he wanted to post it on his bog, and I noticed when he posted the introduction, he’s like, “Special thanks to Katie Barnes,” and I’ve no jealousy towards her, she’s just a great girl, and you know there’s nothing there to worry about. In fact, when…when…when I was worried about Lisa uhh…Andrews and Alana (?) Gomez, her best friend, they were all spending a lot of time together, and so I wasn’t sure, and she would post flirtatious things on his My Space, and he’s like, “Don’t worry about that.” He’s like, he said at one point, he’s like, “If you have anything to worry about, it’s Katie Barnes,” and so I was like, “You are so spin it just throwing the focus off something,” and I don’t think there was ever any concern with that. I know that he liked her, but nothing more and as a friend, and he said, “She’s a little freaky and emotional unstable sometimes, but I think she’s just young. She’s a nice girl.” So he said that, and I’m like, “Hey make sure you post a special thanks to Jodi Arias for editing,” and he’s like, “You know I can’t do that,” and I was like, “Why not?” and he’s like, “Jodi we’ve discussed this,” and what he meant was, umm people…I made a few comments ‘cause he was like, “leave me comments on my Bog, and rate me 5 stars, you know and that kind of thing, so it looks like people are going there. So I left a few comments and he saw people who already said things, and he was referring to Sky Hughes who was like, “Hey I noticed a certain someone has been commenting on your Bog,” and I think it’s because he had given her the… and I told him to say this, too, umm, okay, I’ll be real quick ‘cause I know this is all… I’m just giving you background. We sat next to each other at the last convention, at a prepaid legal convention in Oklahoma City. That’s because we buy our tickets way in advance. So we bought our tickets last year, and because he
qualifies for Executive Director every month which is one of the top levels in the company, he gets to sit on the floor close to the front, that’s close to the stadium seats. So you know I had a ticket. He bought a ticket for me at the time. So it wasn’t a big deal, but we were just sitting next to each other, but she made a comment, you know. He, of course, has to explain, “Listen, we got our tickets a year ago and there’s no way she’s going to give up her seat for stadium seats.” So he sent that ticket, I mean he sent that text either to her friend, Holly, or to her or someone.

Anyway, umm… I realized that she was giving him a hard time so I said, “Listen, tell her next time she says anything that Jodi is dating other people and that she’s moving to California,” because it was already in the plans to move to California.

26:51DF: I don’t understand why they just couldn’t, why he couldn’t just tell them that you guys were still friends. What issue is it?

26:58JA: I wondered that, too, and he said it’s because they…Him and Sky had a lot of arguments but It wasn’t because they disliked each other. It’s because they both have sort of fiery personalities. She’s very… she has… umm…a strict set of standards…ummm…and he’s just like, Hey, so together that’s Kaboom, and uhh… but nonetheless they were best friends, especially him and her husband Chris, and a lot of their fights were about me from what I gathered. I don’t know a lot about that

27:37DF: Is that what the e-mail was about the whole story?

27:40JA: Yeah. We had that conversation and I walked to work because I was you know… (unintelligible as music playing)

JA: We spent the day in Scottsdale and when we were done, umm…we drove to his house, but Deanna was there waiting for him for some reason, to visit or something, and he was so scared that she would see him in my car that I practically had to keep the car rolling and kick him as I drove by his house, and he’s like, “Don’t even put it in park. Just roll up real quick,” and he jumped out, shut the door, and he was like, “Now go, go, go” and I was like, “Okay,” and I just kind of laughed at that. That was August 18th. Umm…

00:47DF: So I see the type of relationship, I mean, it’s exactly what I thought it was.

00:51JA: Well, his thing with Deanna was, and I don’t think that he had anything physical going on with her. I don’t know. I don’t think so. Umm…I know that for a time there was and then…She’s pretty strong in that category I think, as far as her values and standards go. Umm…

01:09DF: So why this trip this time? I know you said he couldn’t…he canceled on you even coming up here in the first part of June, right? Why did you end up going there then? Was it because he couldn’t go and you guys still wanted to see each other?

01:29JA: Well, when his umm….trip the 2nd time got postponed, umm… it was probably the last week of May that I…that you know… it was kind of obvious that he wasn’t going to come then, but he said, “Listen, after Cancun, umm I have like two weeks that I’ll have nothing going on before I go to D.C. He’s like, “I think that’s the best time. He’s like, “I’m going to see if it works out for my friends up north, Chad Perkins his friend and Norma, (?) his wife, and we can do it all then. I said, “All right,” but at that time I was like, “Whatever!” “We’ll see. I might just not see you until till I go back to Utah.” (Unintelligible) do at the end of the month…

02:15DF: So did he know you were coming, the first part of June?

02:18JA: Umm I wasn’t even…like I had been talking with Ryan at this point, and obviously there’s a distance there, and that was difficult and he really wanted to spend time with me, and I really wanted to spend time with him, and it just seemed like he had made a few comments like, “When am I going to come out there,” and, I was like, “As soon as you want,” you know, but I didn’t think he was serious, and uh…

02:39DF: Is this Ryan you are talking about?

02:40JA: Ryan Burns.

02:42JA: Umm…so finally, umm…things began to work out at Casa Ramos with my schedule, which is a Mexican Restaurant and I had a three-day weekend there, so I thought I’ll make this… take this opportunity and go see Ryan, and that was my intention.

03:02DF: What happened when you left? Why did you go the other way?

(Silence)

03:14DF: That’s my question.

03:16JA: You know…

03:16DF: Why go to see Travis if you are going to see Ryan as well, and did Travis know you were coming? He knew? I saw you kind of shake your head a little bit.

03:34JA: This is hard.

03:35DF: It’s okay. Did he know you were coming? Did you guys talk on the phone?

03:49JA: (Whispers) (Unintelligible)

03:50DF: What was the discussion about?

03:55JA: Gordon Hinckley, mostly.

03:57DF: The last conversation you had?

03:58JA: The last long one. We talked a little bit prior.

04:01DF: Did you guys talk when you were en route to Phoenix?

04:07JA: Yeah, just briefly. I told him my phone was dying, which was true. I thought I left my charger in Monterey with Matt. I really, honestly thought that I left my charger there, and I had been talking all day between, just on the phone umm… I take lots of pictures of myself (laughs).

04:31DF: I noticed. (Laughs)

04:34JA: Umm…because I am kind of picky about it, and I guess I take and delete, delete, delete, I take like 20 of them and then I delete, delete, delete.

04:42DF: Keep one.

04:43JA: Yeah, keep two or three or one or none depending…and uh…so I talked a little bit with John Dixon who, I was maybe going to go to San Diego. Umm…there’s another place on the list there, too.

04:56DF: That was on the same trip?

04:57JA: Yeah, it’s a little ambitious, but I thought . . .

05:00DF: Gosh, that’s like 2,500 – 2,800 miles.

05:02JA: It doesn’t bother me. I think I put like 2,400 miles on the car . . .

05:06DF: I can’t stand driving 45 minutes somewhere.

05:10JA: Yeah (laughing). Where are you flying out of?

05:14DF: Uh…Oregon.

05:15JA: Medford? Yeah, that’s good. It’s about an hour. Anyway, it’s a pretty drive. Umm… so it was a little ambitious, but I like road trips and sometimes I have realistic view of things, unrealistic about my time, I tend to show up a little later than expected, which is not unusual for me but . . .

05:39DF: So he knew you were coming? He was expecting you? Obviously you guys had, you know, a little encounter. Is that when those pictures were taken? Did he even show you those pictures?

(Silence)

06:16DF: It’s going to be all right, Jodi.

06:26JA: I feel really powerless in here.

06:31DF: I know.

06:32JA: Do you know what my family is doing today?

06:35DF: No.

06:37JA: Do you know if they are good . . . ?

06:42DF: I haven’t talked to them today. I know they’re worried about you. Everybody is just kind of in limbo right now.

(Silence)

07:05DF: So obviously there was nobody else at the house when you got there. His roommates were gone. Well, there was Napoleon, but . . .

07:16JA: He’s a person, too. (Laughing)

07:19DF: Yeah, I got to meet Napoleon.

07:21JA: He is so awesome.

07:23DF: But nobody else was there?

07:25JA: I think his roommates were there.

07:27DF: You think his roommates were there? Were their cars there? You would have had to see their cars. You parked in the driveway, right?

07:39JA: Yeah.

07:41DF: One roommate parks in the garage and the other one parks outside.

07:45JA: Well, I know Zach would park on the street a lot when I lived there before, and he pulled his car in the garage whenever he would work on it.

07:52DF: What makes you think his roommates were there?

07:55JA: I asked him.

07:57DF: What did he say? Who was home?

08:00JA: He said they were there, but I don’t know who. The reason I asked because it’s kind of an indication of how quiet we have to be.

08:12DF: What time was that? Do you remember what time you rolled in?

08:19JA: Umm… 3 o’clock a.m. It was dark.

08:32DF: Wednesday morning?

08:36JA: I think.

08:37DF: Yeah, that makes sense.

08:45DF: You’re pretty sneaky. You go up there and the roommates don’t even know that you’re there (chuckles).

08:49JA: I did that many, many, many nights.

08:51DF: How did they not see your car?

08:53JA: Ummm...

09:00JA: I don’t know. I was parked there.

09:01DF: Oh, you know what! Zach was house sitting for his girlfriend. His girlfriend was on a trip with uh…, on a cruise with her parents, and he was staying the night at… and I think he was staying the night at…

09:15JA: That makes sense because I want to say that…he said his roommate was home but I don’t remember, but I think he said one roommate was home.

09:21DF: One roommate. Enrique, he gets up about 5:30, 6:00 in the morning . . .

09:26JA: And if I’m correct, then Enrique’s has the room that shares the wall with Travis’ room, which is fine, and you know, it’s a KB home. Travis used to say the walls are really, really thin.

09:37DF: Yes, they skimp on that part.

09:40DF: Yeah, so Enrique was home, so you went in around 2 or 3 in the morning. But he gets up about 6, and…no he leaves the house about 6 in the morning, and he didn’t notice anything different. Did you guys spend the whole day together then, that following day? Did you guys go anywhere or just stay in the house?

10:07JA: Slept.

10:09DF: Well, after a long trip I’d sleep, too.

10:12JA: Travis stayed up all night waiting. He was watching something on You Tube, some stupid video. He’s like, “You gotta’ see this,” and I’m watching and I’m like, “This is so boring. What’s the point of that?” He’s like, “Just stupid, pointless stuff.” I’m like, “Okay.” I guess everyone’s got to have their time to veg out being so driven and deep as he is for business, which is fine that he watches stuff like that. It wasn’t anything profane or bad or vulgar, it was just people dancing, but they had like boxes of foil on their head. It was like weird, like robotic kind of music.

10:58DF: The pictures that I showed you of you laying on the bed and stuff, was that when those were taken that day?

11:06JA: We also made a video but we deleted it.

11:10DF: A video on his camera? Videos are hard to get once they are erased, they take up so much room and … whereas pictures are a little different.

11:30JA: Umm…

11:32DF: What happened after that? What went wrong? I know that the last photos of him were taken about 5:20, 5:30, and you said he doesn’t like… he doesn’t like you to take pictures of him and stuff.

JA: He was very private about the shower like we…

DF: (Laughs) Was that why you were taking pictures of him in the shower? (Laughs)

11:53JA: No, no.

11:56DF: (Laughs) Trying to get back at him?

11:57JA: No. Um…

12:04DF: I’m surprised he allowed you to take pictures of him in the shower. The first few looked like he wasn’t too comfortable, but, obviously, whatever you were saying to him made him a little more comfortable.

12:18JA: I remember all that pretty clearly.

12:21DF: You remember that?

12:27DF: What went wrong? Did he say something to you? Were you angry about something? Were you frustrated? What was it?

13:04DF: Something happened at that point, and I don’t know what it was.

13:11JA: What are they going to do with the rental car? Are they going to bring it here?

13:14DF: Mmm hmm. There were several photos of him, and the last one that we have is of him sitting in the shower, and that’s when I think it happened. He was sitting down looking up at you. What did you do? What happened, Jodi? You’ve gone this far. Did you plan on doing that the whole time?

14:20JA: (Whispers) No.

14:22DF: Then why? Tell me. I don’t believe you planned it, but then I don’t understand why, why you took a gun with you.

14:41JA: Oh, I didn’t.

14:42DF: Where was that gun from, then? Where did you get it? Everybody says he didn’t have one. Where did you get it if you didn’t take it? Did he have one in the house?

15:12JA: Not to my knowledge.

15:16DF: Then where did you get it? Did you bring it with you? Did you get it there in Arizona?

15:35JA: I didn’t ever have it actually, like having in my possession.

DF: Then who had it? If you didn’t have it and Travis didn’t have it, then who had it? Jodi, please!

16:37DF: Did someone catch you there? Someone not expecting you to be there?

16:45JA: They would have seen my car.

16:50DF: Then who was it?

16:58JA: (Whispers) I don’t know their names. Listen, I will tell you… I can tell you everything that I know or that I remember …

17:14DF: Okay, what do you remember; from the time you were taking the pictures to the time you left, what happened? What happened after that last picture was taken? You have to tell me.

(Silence)

18:06DF: If you want me to believe someone else was there, you have to show me. (Jodi crying) You have to explain what happened. Otherwise, it was just you, and if that’s the case, that’s okay. That’s okay as well.

18:27JA: (Crying) It’s better if everyone thinks that.

18:34DF: If everyone thinks it was just you? No, it’s not.

18:38JA: (Crying) It is. Really, you have no idea.

18:40DF: I do.

18:43JA: No. You have no idea.

18:50DF: You’re going through your own things right now. If somebody else was there with you, we need to know that. Why would somebody do that just because you are there with Travis?

19:10JA: (Whispers). They didn’t say.

19:12DF: Hmm???

19:12JA: They didn’t say.

19:13DF: He didn’t say? They. What was the first thing they did to him? You were there. You saw it. What was the first thing?

19:36JA: I actually didn’t see it, I heard it, first.

19:40DF: Was there an argument? No?

19:46JA: Umm…Not between Travis and I.

19:49DF: Any argument between anybody?

19:57JA: (Whispers) Yeah. Is there any way I can see those pictures? I just…

20:04DF: No, not right now.

20:05JA: Can I see them soon? I will…

20:11DF: You need to start letting me know what happened. You’re telling me that some other people were there. You know how much that concerns me?

20:26JA: I don’t know who they were. They know where I live or they know where my parents are. I don’t know if they know where my grandparents are, but they got my address. They know where my family is. Sorry.

20:46DF: So you’re trying to say that you’re doing this to protect your family? Why would someone do this to you and to him?

20:59JA: I don’t think they really intended to do anything to me.

21:04DF: You’re saying someone followed you all the way to Arizona from here?

21:09JA: No, I don’t think that. I think I was an element of surprise for them.

21:14DF: You were an element of surprise? So they didn’t expect you to be there.

21:17JA: I am guessing, I don’t think so.

21:19DF: They didn’t expect you to be there?

21:25JA: I mean they had to have seen my car.

21:25DF: Is it someone who lives in Mesa locally?

21:28JA: I didn’t recognize them.

21:31DF: Well, you have to give me a motive. Why did they do this? Were they going after Travis? For what reason? You tell me this, but you give me no reason.

21:48JA: They didn’t discuss much, they just argued.

21:51DF: About what?

21:52JA: About whether or not to kill me.

21:54DF: For what reason?

21:57JA: Because I’m a witness.

21:57DF: A witness to what?

21:58JA: Him. Of Travis.

22:01DF: Of Travis’ murder?

22:02JA: Yeah, but I didn’t really witness it. I didn’t see much. I just…

22:11DF: You need to make this believable because it’s not believable to me right now. You need to give me something.

22:20JA: Okay, I just, listen…

22:24DF: I am listening, Jodi, I am listening, and it just doesn’t make any sense to me.

22:29JA: That’s fine because my family will ...

22:35DF: Well, help us protect your family, if that’s the case.

22:40JA: They got my driver’s license. It has a P.O. Box on it.

22:42DF: Mmm hmm.

JA: Then they got my registration out of my purse which was in the purse that I was using at the time, and it has my parent’s address on it.

22:59DF: Why would they do this? Do you see where I am coming from? Why, what kind of beef did they have with him, or was it with you or . . . . You need to make this believable. People just don’t go in somewhere and kill somebody for no reason and then let a witness go. That doesn’t happen. They have already killed one person, why not just take care of the other? You know who they are, if you are telling me the truth.

23:35JA: I don’t know them.

23:39DF: Then I don’t believe you either. I can’t, you can’t expect me to. I want to . . .

23:52JA: Umm…I wasn’t planning on going to Travis’ house. I was going to go to Santa Cruz. Well, I wasn’t planning on going to Santa Cruz; I was going to Monterrey, but by that time I called Matt, he was like, “We’re in Santa Cruz, meet us here,” and I said, “Okay.” So I went to the Red Room there, which is just a little kind of hang out for locals and younger kids our age, sort of, 20 somethings and 30 somethings, and I stayed the night in Monterrey that night, got up the next morning and visited with Darryl and his son before he went to school. Umm… drove…this is Tuesday the 3rd, umm…and driving to LA, I hadn’t heard back from Laura yet, but that’s what…It wasn’t until I got to LA where I thought. I was looking at my map and Utah wasn’t really on there but, I mean, Arizona, ‘cause it was to Utah on the Map quest directions I printed. Umm, okay, I just, I just see like… I’ve seen the Sopranos and they are not Mafia or anything, but, you know, I just, I honestly, there’s a part of me inside that thinks they are never going to come after my family.

25:07DF: Well, from what you’re telling me and from what I know about Travis and all his dealings, there’s no reason anyone would go after him. Nothing! So what you are telling me about two people coming in or however many people coming in and taking care of him and letting you go, it just sounds so farfetched to me. Why would they do this, what were they arguing about? What did they say, their details?

25:36JA: They didn’t say a lot. They were white Americans from what I could tell. They had, umm…ummm…what do you call those things? They are like beanies but they cover your whole face, and they’ve got like holes for your nose and eyes . . . .

25:53DF: Ski mask?

25:57JA: One was black, I think they were both black or dark blue or something. It was Anyway, umm it wasn’t until I was in LA and Laura wasn’t getting back to me, and it was already like 9 something and I was like maybe I will just go see Travis briefly. I called Ryan and I said, my phone was about to die and ummm I tried getting a hold of Matt, I got his voice mail. I was going to ask him if my charger was there and he could save it or mail it or something. Umm…so I just, I had a wall charger, I think, and I was just going to charge it later, I guess, when I got somewhere. Anyway, I did call Travis, and I said, “Guess what?” and he said, “What?” and I said, “I’m coming to Arizona tonight,” and there was silence, and then he goes, “Really? and I said, “Yeah” and he said, “What made you change your mind?” and I just said, I just…‘cause I told him I missed him or something, but I would have said because you are too compelling, but like he is too, he’s already got a big enough head about that stuff.
So I showed up, and he was looking at You Tube on his computer, on his laptop, in the office. We watched that for a little while, and he was very happy to see me. Napoleon barked, but he always barks when somebody walks in, but then he was really happy to see me and he gets so excited. He does this thing with his butt where he goes around in circles over and over and over till he realizes, stop going in circles. So it was a good reunion. I told him I was tired. I don’t know what his intentions were or what he thought my intentions were at the time, but I was very exhausted from the trip, and I just said, “I think I’m going to sleep,” and he said, “That’s fine.” I slept pretty well the day before, but I was tired from driving all night, so I slept and he slept and we must have slept until about 1:00.

28:23DF: In the afternoon?

12:24JA: Yes, it must have been around then, and his roommate was home when I got there. I have never seen his roommate, though, so I must have been asleep by the time he got up and left. Okay, if you don’t believe me, that’s okay.

28:43DF: I am trying to. I’m trying really hard.

28:46JA: I’m just saying that, you know, it sounds to me like umm… like I’m already in the system, pretty far in. I’m not getting out anytime soon and as long as the rap falls on me I think… No, I’m just saying that as long as that is… there’s less of a chance that my little brother who is going to be hurt or my mom or dad or my sister that live there.

29:13DF: Well, continue on with the story, about one o’clock…

29:19JA: Yes, we had sex a couple of times. Once was in his bed and once was again downstairs in his office. He was looking at some pictures that I had brought for him, but he has a virus on his computer, so when he clicked the Start menu on Windows XP or Windows 2000 or whatever, you have like My Pictures, My Music, My Computer. You can usually click on My Computer and then go into the disc drive and open that. He clicked the Windows and it come up and none of that My Pictures, My Music, none of that would come up, so he had some kind of virus he was dealing with. His screensaver was a bunch of little bugs eating up the screen. It was just weird, and he said that is from the virus, too. I said, “That’s a cute screensaver,” and he said, “Yeah, it’s my stupid virus.” For some reason, that was frustrating for both of us, because we couldn’t look at the pictures, and they were from a lot of our church history trips which are on my other external drive which I haven’t been able to access for a long time, since after Christmas, because it just quit, and I just haven’t had the money to spend to get all that stuff back.

30:41DF: So you guys worked with that for awhile or…

30:44JA: Yeah, we had three discs, I think.

30:50DF: So what time is this now you guys are messing with the computer?

30:54JA: Um…I don’t really remember, it was after we had...

30:59DF: A couple of hours or so later?

31:00JA: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, after noon. I just, you know…He had been cleaning his house umm…so I couldn’t… I wasn’t sitting on the couch. Usually I would just chill on the couch downstairs, you know, if no one was home. Umm…but he had like chairs and all that stuff all over the couch. I think he was cleaning the floors or something, uhh…fed Napoleon. I don’t know if he made phone calls or not or what he was doing on the internet, but at one point he was going to go up and take a shower and it took a lot of convincing prior when he was shaving. I was like, I got some ideas, and they didn’t turn out good at all, not like I wanted to, but I thought that I could get some cool pictures of him shaving, ‘cause he does the whole old-fashioned thing with like this little, I don’t know how it works. Umm…but he liked it though, apparently, because he used it for his profile picture on My Space. Umm…so those didn’t turn out as good and I was going to do that later but I asked him if I could take pictures of him in the shower, and he’s like, “No.” I was just like, “I have an idea.” “Well, what do you mean?” I was like, I said, I saw this thing in a Calvin Klein ad once and it looked really good, and you’re right, he wasn’t really comfortable at first. He’s standing there and he says, “I feel gay.” (Laughs)

32:29DF: (Laughs) He has that look on his face.

32:33JA: So some I deleted and some I kept taking umm…and some he looked really good, I thought. The one that you showed me yesterday looking right at you, I think that is a great picture. He hates it. I don’t know what he hates about that. I think it’s a very good picture of him.

32:51DF: So you were taking pictures and showing him?

32:54JA: Yeah. Yeah. His shower door was open. His water pressure in that shower isn’t that great, so it’s not like water was going everywhere.

00:31
(Jodi becomes animated and begins to use her hands/body to demonstrate)

00:32JA: He’s like…if this is the shower and the sink is over here, I was like right here taking pictures, and I don’t really know what happened after that exactly, except I think he was shot.

00:48DF: Where were you?

00:51
(Jodi becomes animated during this response, gets up from her chair and begins to demonstrate where everything was in Travis’ bathroom. She proceeds to kneel on the floor to show Detective Flores where she was crouched)

00:52JA: Umm… if this is his shower and he was sitting here, I was like…Well, if this is his shower, and he’s sitting here, I was like right there on my knees, and his bathtub was right here, and I was taking them here, and I was just going through the pictures, and I heard this loud ring,

01:09
(Jodi gets up and sits back in her chair. Jodi pulls both of her feet up onto the edge of the chair seat, positioned such that her entire body is on the seat of the chair, knees level with her shoulders)

01:12JA: and…I don’t really remember except Travis was screaming. I think I got knocked out, but I don’t think I was out long. I know I got knocked in the head, and I’ve gotten knocked in the head once by my dad when he was just really mad, and it wasn’t like… Actually, he didn’t knock me in the head, he just pushed me against the wall, and I hit my head and I fell, but he…In this case I think it was similar because he uh… was screaming, and I was by the bathtub, and he was holding his head, and there were two people there and…

01:54DF: What did you see?

01:57JA: Umm…I remember putting my hand on his back, because he was on all four of his knees. He was like

02:10
(Jodi gets up, moves to the floor on all fours, positioning herself and demonstrating what position Travis was in as she describes this to DF)

02:11JA: …on his knees like this doing something like this or something like, I don’t know…and

02:15
(Jodi gets up off the floor and returns to her chair, pulling both of her feet up onto the chair seat as previously described at 01:09)

02:16JA: I was like, “Are you okay? What’s going on? What’s going on?” and he’s like, “Go get help! Go get help!” and I said, “Okay!” I turned around. There were two people there, one was a guy and one was a girl. I couldn’t tell that at first, but you could see one was a girl and one was a guy because of their build and their voices. Um…I remember what they were wearing like maybe jeans, um…

02:52DF: What did they say?

02:53JA: One was in all black and one was in jeans.

02:57DF: Did they say anything?

03:01JA: Yeah, the girl wanted to kill me, too.

03:04DF: What did she say? What words did you hear? What phrases?

03:13JA: Umm…”Who is that? Who is that?” I thought he was by himself or alone or something and… He was like, “Shut up, just finish it,” and Travis was screaming the whole time. He wasn’t screaming like a girl. He was just like… like he was in pain… like he was like shocked, like “Ahhhh,” you know. He wasn’t really moving though, you know, he was just kind of staying still on the floor.

03:48DF: Then what happened?

03:51JA: Well, as soon as he said, “Go get help,” I turned around and they were there and…

03:55DF: Where were they?

03:57JA: They were in the bathroom.

03:58DF: Where at in the bathroom – out in the hallway or in the bathroom?

04:00JA: The girl was in the hallway, kind of. Um…and the guy was more toward in the bedroom, but like still in the bathroom, like on the tile carpet area right there where it starts.

04:14DF: Okay.

04:19JA: and… he started coming in toward the bathroom, too, and I… (Puts head down on table).

04:32JA: It was…

04:35DF: What happened? What happened, Jodi? What did you see?

04:48
(Jodi crying) I chickened out like a little bytch.

04:59DF: You took off?

05:00JA: I ran, and he stopped me when he… (crying)

05:05DF: He stopped you?

05:06JA: Travis. Umm…he was…umm… he was still like conscious and still alive.

05:16DF: You just left him there?

05:18JA: No, I ran into the closet, because there are two doors, and they were sort of in the hallway already, and he stopped me, and he didn’t touch me. He was just…held the gun to my head and he said, “You don’t go anywhere,” and he told the other girl to finish it, but I didn’t see. Umm…but, he was like…he wasn’t saying a lot but…umm…

05:59DF: What happened?

06:00JA: He told me to stay there and not to move.

06:03DF: Where was that – in the closet?

06:04JA: No, it was um…

06:06
(Jodi reaches across the table and grabs DF’s tablet, turns the top page over to begin drawing on a new, clean page)

06:08JA: It was like this. Sorry.

06:13
(DF reaches across and takes his tablet from Jodi and begins to draw Travis’ bedroom for Jodi)

06:14DF: Here’s his bedroom, okay, and you got the long hallway to his bathroom, the sink. We have the closet here. Then we have the shower, then the bathtub right there, and then there’s the toilet right there. Okay. This is the sink. Then his bedroom is, well, actually there’s a closet door there. (DF pushes the table towards Jodi)

06:53
(Jodi takes the tablet, picks up a pencil/pen and draws on it)

JA: Yes, exactly, and so his closet is kind of like this.

06:57
(Jodi continues to draw/write on the diagram)

JA: So I ran this way, ‘cause they were…He was walking this way, and she was already right here. Umm… and then he stopped me here and he said, “Don’t move,” and uh… Travis was here, or somewhere right around, and he left the room for a minute, and I didn’t have my stupid phone because it wasn’t charged, and Travis’ phone is downstairs and I didn’t know… His roommates I didn’t think were home at the time, so like I was trying to think if there was anyway I could call 911 or call or…or get out of the house. There’s no way out except downstairs. His windows are…they’re two stories for one, and they’re just, they were hard to get to. He had stuff – here and stuff here and blinds and screens and window coverings and I mean… from the outside… and I just… Umm…she was over him and I just rushed her and I pushed her, and there was…

08:11DF: There was what?

08:13JA: Travis was bleeding everywhere.

08:18DF: What was she doing to him, because he had been shot at this time, right?

08:24JA: Yeah, but he was still alive.

08:25DF: Mmm hmm.

08:27JA: He was conscious even, like…

08:29DF: Still talking…

08:31JA: Oh, he wasn’t talking or saying much, but I could tell he was breathing. He seemed like he was breathing calmly, I think, he wasn’t like…He was just there. I can’t really remember. It was such a blur.

08:41DF: Okay, and so you did what now? You pushed her?

08:49JA: She’s a little bit bigger than me, not really in size but height. Umm…

09:01DF: Then what happened?

09:05JA: Oh, it didn’t really deter her.

09:08DF: Did she have any weapons on her at all?

09:11JA: Uh, yeah.

09:12DF: What did she have?

09:14JA: Umm…she…I thought she was the one with the gun, but maybe she had the gun, but he had a gun So either there were two guns or one gun. I don’t know.

09:24DF: Well, she’s the one who shot him though, right? She was the one here and he was back here at the time when you saw him.

09:31JA: I would think so, because, I mean, I do…I don’t know. I got hit here, somewhere. I just. I don’t know. “Cause when I was… when I woke up, he was screaming, and I saw her at this point, like right here, and walking. She must have been walking back this way, and I saw him sort of following, and that’s when he was like, “Finish.”

10:00DF: Okay.

10:02JA: And then I started running this way, and he stopped me, and he left the room for a couple of minutes.

10:06DF: Why did he leave?

10:07JA: Maybe… I don’t know. I don’t know.

10:10DF: Okay, so what happened after you pushed her?

10:13JA: Um…I got Travis, and he wasn’t like standing up really. He wasn’t really doing much, and he was… I was trying to get him… and she came back. I got him kind of far, like right here. She came back and uh…He was just… He was starting to just get weaker and weaker, and this guy came back in, and she said that umm…She said… they needed to um….do me, too, because umm.. because I was there, and he was like, “No, that’s not why we’re here,” and…Um…

11:09
(DF’s phone buzzer goes off)

11:16JA: He had my purse, which I had on the dresser here prior. Umm…

11:26DF: And what did they do after this, after you guys reached this. Just try to stick with the incident from what was going on?

11:40JA: She came after me, and he stopped her.

11:45DF: Okay.

11:47JA: And she didn’t get me.

11:50DF: How was she going to get you? Did she have a weapon?

11:52JA: She had a knife.

11:54DF: Okay.

11:58DF: You said she had a gun before.

12:00JA: I don’t know if she had a gun. I…I think…’cause I am guessing. Umm…I know that he had a gun. I don’t know if she had a gun or not.

12:13DF: So she was basically the aggressor?

12:17JA: Yeah, unless he took a shot, too. I don’t know.

12:20DF: But it seemed like from what you were telling me she was the aggressive one and he was the more passive.

12:26JA: Yeah, I mean, there was definitely aggression as far as, I mean, I don’t know what you define aggression as but like there was definitely a sternness, and I wasn’t like just free to walk out of there like, Hey, it’s cool, it’s cool. It wasn’t anything like that.

12:47DF: Then what happened?

12:52JA: Um… they had an argument back and forth, and she wanted to kill me, and he didn’t. Umm…

13:01DF: Why didn’t they kill you? Just because he said…

13:04JA: He said that’s not what we’re here for.

13:09DF: Did they say why they were there?

13:10JA: No, but it was obvious they were there for him. They didn’t say why.

13:21DF: So it seemed like they knew him, obviously.

13:24JA: Yeah, but he didn’t seem to know them. I mean he was a little out of it, plus they had masks on anyway, but he didn’t express any kind of recognition.

13:35DF: Well, he couldn’t talk.

13:38JA: He was able to say, “Go get help,” and at one point he said, “Go to my neighbor’s house.” “Go to my neighbor’s house.” There was just like…there was just no way out of …

13:53DF: Did you see them hurt him any more?

13:57JA: Umm…

13:59DF: Other than a gunshot?

14:04JA: Um…she had a knife and I don’t know. He was bleeding everywhere. It was like… when she rushed me afterward, or she came back, I rushed her but she kind of came back at me. Umm…

14:26DF: Why didn’t …

14:27JA: Travis & I were right about here, maybe. I don’t know. Half way? I don’t know. Umm…and there was a little bit of a struggle with her and I. Umm…I was so scared. I’m not a person who fights. Umm…I’m not a person who knows really about self defense. I took some classes once, but it was like eight years ago and I’ve never been consistent with it.

15:00DF: Okay.

15:01JA: Umm…so I wasn’t sure. I just knew I had to hold onto her hands because she had a knife.

15:08DF: What hand did she have it in?

15:10JA: She…she had it in this hand, but well, her right, so…

15:12DF: Her right?

15:21DF: What happened?

15:28DF: So you didn’t see her hurt him anymore. He was just bleeding. Where did he end up?

15:35JA: He um… When I tried getting him here, he said, “Go get help.” And when I tried…came back this way, pushed her, and he said, “Go to my neighbors” “Go to my neighbors,” and I wasn’t like, “No” but I wasn’t going to leave if I couldn’t leave without him. I was trying. Umm I felt stupid already for trying to run this way. I was going to go to a phone, and he was like, “Come on” “Come on”. You know he was naked but I didn’t care. Just Come on. And he was like, I can’t. I said, Come on, and he said, I can’t feel my legs.

16:18JA: And they wouldn’t let me be by him.

16:22DF: Were you clothed at that time or were you also nude?

16:26JA: Yeah, I was clothed.

16:DF: Okay.

16:28DF: Are those the pants I showed you the other day on the camera?

16:31JA: On…I don’t think I have pants like that. I don’t know. Umm…I’ve got a lot of clothes. I’m trying to remember the clothes that I took to that trip. Um… oh, I do have another pair of striped pants, and they’re gray though with a black stripe.

16:46DF: Okay.

16:48JA: I don’t think they were those. I don’t know.

16:50DF: Okay. So what happened after that?

16:53JA: Umm…

16:57DF: They had a conversation about killing you, too, and you…and then they decided not to.

17:04JA: She really, really, really wanted to.

17:06DF: What happened then?

17:09JA: From there they were … I was here, like his armoire whatever it’s called, but his TV was here. and I was right about here and I had to stay here and I was calling his name and they were like, “Shut the hell up,” Umm and I was just…I don’t know if I was crying. It was all just like… It was so weird. Umm… he was going through umm…my purse, and he pulled out my wallet and he just took some cash. Umm I had though my cash stashed in the jeans I had worn, like a good chunk of it, like 80 bucks, stashed in four twenties in the back of my jean pockets which were in my backpack ummm but I had some cash in here, not all of it though. So he took that, though and um…

18:43JA: Yeah, she wasn’t far. It’s not a far distance. There was part of me I think that was just. I was sitting, and I was just like…I didn’t know what to say. Do you beg for your life? Do you say, Who are you guys? I’m powerless, because I don’t have any way to stop them. They were just more powerful, so I figured…

19:04DF: Okay. Well, Continue on. So once they took stuff from there, what did they do?

19:08JA: Umm… she was…I don't know what she was doing, but she was arguing with him and talking with him and saying…

19:16DF: What were they saying?

19:17JA: She’s like, it wasn’t like super yelling. It was kind of like hushed, but intense like “You need to da da da da da,” and “Shut up! That’s not why we’re here.” Things like that. And…and uh…he grabbed my wallet, and he was looking through it. He just took the cash and put it in his pocket. He umm…got my registration out of my wallet and he said,

19:59DF: What did he say?

20:09JA: He said you must be that bytch from California.

20:12DF: Mmm hmm.

20:15JA: And he was going like this with my registration, and he said, he said…”You ever, ever, ever say anything about this,” he said they’ll do to my family the same way and me, and I didn’t care so much about me at that point. He said, “We need to leave and don’t you call anybody. Don’t say anything. Don’t you act like anything happened!” He’s like I’ll give you one chance, and she said, “She’s going to rat us out, she’s going to say something” and he’s like, “Shut up! You get one chance.”

21:29DF: Was that when you left?

21:30JA: He said, “Leave now,” and part of me didn’t want to leave. Travis wasn’t… was still alive. He was still... I could…He wasn’t moving a lot, but he was still alive. I could see that he was still…

21:50DF: did you leave at that point?

21:52JA: Umm…I left the room

21:54DF: Where did you go?

21:55JA: I went downstairs, but I didn’t have all my clothes.

22:06DF: What did you leave there?

22:07JA: Well, Travis said I had some stuff there. I didn’t see what it was. He said it was in his closet. He said there were clothes of mine, but all I had was my purse and my backpack. I left those and I went outside.

22:33DF: Mmm hmm.

22:40DF: And then what did you do?

22:46JA: I wanted to get help. I … I just wanted to get help. He told me that if I didn’t say anything that I would be… that I wouldn’t even live to regret it but that I would regret it.

23:07DF: No idea why they did this to him? You have to know something about it.

23:17JA: I’m trying to think what else was said.

23:20DF: Anything that clicked in your mind, because why would anybody do this to him? He has done nothing but help people. Everybody likes him. He doesn’t owe people money, no people like that anyway.

23:38JA: No.

23:40DF: He doesn’t get involved in things he’s not supposed to get involved in. He doesn’t do drugs. It doesn’t seem like a robbery, burglary…

23:49JA: No, it doesn’t. I was wondering if they took my stuff to make it look that way, and they told me to leave, and, you know, umm…Travis usually keeps his cash in his wallet.

24:02DF: So you didn’t see what happened to him then?

24:06JA: I just saw that…

24:09DF: Did you get hurt at all? You said you were fighting with her.

24:12JA: Yeah.

24:13DF: What happened to you?

24:15JA: Umm…she cut me.

24:16DF: Where at?

24:17JA: My hand.

24:18DF: Let me see. Where at? Can you show me?

24:20JA: (Gestures with her left hand) You actually can’t see it. If you look at… my finger isn’t the same, though. I was…

24:27DF: Let me see. Where did it get cut?

24:30
(Jodi extends her left arm and places it on the table. DF gets up and looks closely at her fingers)

24:33JA: It was…Conveniently it was right on the crease.

24:35DF: Right there on the crease?

24:36JA: Can you see it? Well, it’s kind of a purple color, I guess.

24:40DF: This one here? Yeah right on the crease.

24:43JA: Well, there’s a vein on this one. I don’t know.

24:47DF: Is this the one here?

24:48JA: Yeah.

24:49DF: So it was sliced there. Just a small one or was it pretty deep?

24:55JA: Umm…I don’t know how deep it was but my finger hurt for a long … for awhile.

24:59DF: Okay, so like right in that crease that you… across both of them?

25:05JA: Uhh…not my middle finger, I mean it cut this one a little but not as much. This is where it really went in. I don’t know how it happened that all of these other fingers were missed but this one, I don’t know. This one, I still can’t close this finger all the way. This is as closed as it goes whereas this one goes like that, so my CTR ring used to fit both fingers, and I can’t get it on this finger anymore.

25:25DF: So it cut pretty deep then?

25:27JA: I guess. If you feel it, squeeze it. It just feels like bone, like there’s nothing abnormal there but again, like my CTR ring slides right on this finger and it used to slide right off this finger. I just can’t fit a ring on here.

25:39DF: Okay.

25:40JA: It’s a bigger size now.

25:44DF: What about this here? What’s that from?

25:46JA: That’s my cat.

25:47DF: Okay.

25:48JA: I’m pretty sure. She scratches me a lot.

25:50DF: So when you were told to leave, you left? Did you get in your car and drive away?

25:57JA: I always have my keys. My keys have a little clip on them and I do that because I’m very, very spacey.

26:03DF: Did you see any other cars in the driveway or on the street?

26:06JA: Umm…

26:07DF: Any vehicle descriptions you can give us?

26:10JA: Uhh… no. No, not that I…Not that I…I don’t think his roommates were home.

26:16DF: And you just left? You didn’t run to the neighbors. You didn’t try calling. You knew they were in his house. You had time to run to the neighbor. Why didn’t you do that?

26:29JA: I was really scared.

26:30DF: Okay.

26:33JA: I was really freaked out of my mind.

26:36DF: Okay.

26:40DF: I don’t believe you. I came in here hoping that you would tell me the truth, and this is not the truth, Jodi.

26:49JA: This is all I know.

26:50DF: This does not make any sense -- does not make any sense!

26:58JA: It’s all I know.

27:04DF: Nothing changes for me.

27:09JA: I didn’t think it would.

27:16JA: I’m responsible because I feel that I could have done more. I feel that I should have gotten help. I feel like I should have been stronger.

27:30DF: You feel responsible because you did this.

27:34JA: I did not hurt Travis.

27:35DF: Jodi. You did. You did, and there’s nothing you can say that will change my mind. This is an elaborate story that does not make any sense. Two people come in, first two white males, then later you change it to,

27:53JA: No, I don’t think I ever said white males.

27:55DF: Yes, you did.

27:56JA: When?

27:57DF: At the beginning of the story. Then you change it, ahh, no, one is a female.

28:03JA: I knew it was female the whole time. I said I wasn’t sure at first, but you could tell by their build.

28:06DF: Okay.

28:10DF: It doesn’t make any sense to me, and there’s no reason anybody would go after him. There’s nothing in his past, nothing at that time he was going through that would cause somebody to do that to him, and the fact that they left you alive and let you go? That never happens. Why would anybody do that? Why would somebody risk the chance of getting caught letting you run out the front door when they’re upstairs in his house killing somebody, knowing that you could just run across the street and tell somebody? It doesn’t make any sense. Does it make any sense to you? It doesn’t, does it?

28:56JA: No. They argued about it. It doesn’t make sense. I though for sure I was dead.

29:03
(DF’s phone buzzes)

29:08DF: I was hoping that you were going to be completely truthful to me today. Obviously, that’s not the case. I know you were there. I know you had some situation going on with him that got out of control, and that cut that you’re showing me there, that’s pretty obvious how that happened. I’ve seen that before. That happens when the knife slips through someone’s hand because of blood. It’s slippery, and it cuts. That’s what happens. I’ve done this for a long time, and this is the most far fetched story I’ve ever heard, and it’s not going to help you. Is that how you want to leave this?

30:02JA: I just don’t want my family to get hurt.

30:04DF: Your family will not get hurt. It will not get hurt.

30:11DF: The way you’re hurting your family is by not coming forward and telling the truth. There is a reason why you did this, and you just refuse to tell me why. Maybe because you are cold and calculated, and you went there intentionally to do this, and you’re ashamed of it, so ashamed that you will come up with a story to try to hide it. (Sigh)

30:45JA: I was there that day but I didn’t take Travis’ life.

30:48DF: You haven’t convinced me, and I mean I hope you can convince a jury, but I doubt it very seriously, because there’s no evidence of anybody else. Nobody!

00:27DF: And we’re still not done looking at all the evidence. We still have other things to uhh…check in the lab and other…

00:38JA: What kind of things?

00:39DF: blood swabs and other things like that, and every time they call me and tell me, Hey, we’ve checked this; it points at Jodi. Hey, we’ve checked that; that points at Jodi. Nothing points at anybody else. Do you want to be truthful with me? If not, we can just end it now, and we’ll just leave it the way it is.

01:00JA: I know that it’s obvious I was there. Umm…

01:03DF: No, it’s obvious that you committed a crime, that you hurt Travis.

01:07JA: There’s no reason for me to hurt him.

01:08DF: No! It’s not like that. It’s… it’s… I know that you did this, and you refuse to tell me why.

01:16JA: There’s no reason.

01:17DF: You refuse to tell me why. There’s no reason somebody else would come in and do this to him. There’s no motive whatsoever. We haven’t found any.

01:26JA: What is my motive?

01:28DF: Jealousy? Anger? Fear? Fear of being alone? Angry at him for not keeping you in his life? I don’t know. That’s why I’m trying to figure it out. There are so many motives with you. Too many!

(Silence)

02:07DF: We know you had a .25 auto.

02:10
(DF’s phone goes off)

02:011DF: You guys reported it stolen. We recovered the ammunition, and it matches. We recovered the shell casing, and it matches the ammunition. Your prints, your blood, your hair, a motive, you were there...

02:40JA: I wasn’t jealous of anything. I was a little envious because he was going to Cancun but that wasn’t the reason. Like, I could go to Cancun. It’s not cheap, I mean, it’s not expensive to go to Mexico.

02:52DF: I know. You were probably standing above him when he was in the shower, and you shot him in the head.

02:58JA: I was kneeling down beside him looking at the pictures.

03:01DF: Jodi! And then you had a knife, and you stabbed him -- several times. Yes, you did! Jodi! (DT sighs). Tell me the truth. Please! Or if you want, we can stop here. It doesn’t matter. You have given me so much already, why stop? Do you want to? Do you want to continue? Do you want to tell me the truth?

(Silence)

04:01DF: What did you do with the gun?

04:05JA: I never had it in my possession.

04:07DF: Jodi, you did.

04:09JA: Never. I don’t have it.

04:13DF: Yeah, you don’t have it. You know, people say that when they know of the gun, they’ve seen the gun, they’ve touched the gun, you don’t have it.

04:25JA: I saw the gun.

04:26DF: Yeah, but you had it before. You’ve touched it. You’ve used it. I know you have. (DT sighs)

04:46JA: I don’t think I’ve ever even fired a gun. I’ve done bows and arrows but not guns, and water guns, but not a real gun. And the gun that I got on Friday was never used.

05:01DF: So you’re gonna’ continue to tell me that you didn’t do this to him?

05:04JA: I did not kill Travis.

05:07DF: I believe you did. I truly believe you did, and there’s nothing showing that anybody else did this. Nothing! I have been in so many scenes and so many investigations, and there’s always, always some type of evidence left behind, no matter how careful somebody is. And in this case, there was evidence, not pointing at anybody else. Just you! And that’s what I have to go by, and that’s what my report’s gonna’ to say.

05:48JA: Okay. I’m just… If I had planned to hurt him in any way, I, you know, I am not the brightest person, but I… I don’t think I could stab him. I think I would have to shoot him continuously until he was dead, if that were my intention. Again, and I would bring up the gloves again, but I would have to wear gloves. I mean I am not too worried about prints, because they are all over anyway, but I would never stab him. If, if, if I had it anywhere in me to kill him, the least I could have done was to make it as humane as possible, or quick, or something, you know, if any killing is humane, so to speak. I don’t mean it that way…I would just...like, he was still alive...

06:48DF: Yes. Yes, he was. He was alive for awhile, and I knew that he had been shot first, and he was still alive and possibly tried to get away, maybe even tried to fight back.

06:59JA: I think he was in shock. I just remember waking up and he was…

07:01DF: But you didn’t see him fight back or anything did you? He just kind of collapsed there and....

07:07JA: No, he was here (JA points at DF’s drawing of Travis’ bathroom, etc.) right outside of the shower...

07:10DF: And then he…You pulled him this way and you tried to get away with him, but then he couldn’t go any further.

07:16JA: He said he couldn’t move. He said he couldn’t feel his legs.

07:19DF: And that was the last place you saw him. You said that he stopped and he kind of collapsed right there. She was standing there and he was over here, and it just doesn’t make any sense.

07:32JA: He was still like able to move his…like, he was all…I guess he was all conscious up here sort of still. He wasn’t like on his legs or on his knees or on his feet. He wasn’t walking...

07:45DF: He was crawling.

07:50JA: Yeah, I’m trying to think how he got over there. He was sort of using his legs, but he wasn’t standing up.

07:58DF: Yeah. If you’re going to continue on that road, I don’t think I want to go any further.

08:06JA: I don’t remember what time I left, but...

08:12DF: I gave you an opportunity. This was the only opportunity. Okay, and you just, you just yeah you gave me the information that you were there, but I knew you were there, and then you throw some story in that is not plausible. It just doesn’t make any sense with the evidence that was there at the house, it doesn’t make any sense at all. That evidence tells a story. And nowhere in that evidence does that story that you told me match. It doesn’t match. Is that how you want to leave it? You want to stop here and that’s how you want to leave it?

08:57JA: I know that I didn’t take Travis’ life, and I know that you don’t…

09:00DF: I know that you did.

09:01JA: Look, I know you don’t believe me.

09:03DF: I don’t believe you.

09:08JA: As long as I’m here, someone else is happy, that’s its not them.

09:15DF: So you are just going to let these two people get away with it?

09:18JA: There’s not even any way to identify them. One was male, one was female. They were taller than me, not by a whole lot.

09:31DF: Okay. Are you ready to go back?

09:39JA: Umm…yeah, I guess. I’d still like to say something to his family, but I don’t think I have anything that could bring them comfort.

09:45DF: Okay.

09:47JA: Maybe I could write them a letter.

09:50DF: Well, you’ll always have the opportunity to do that, so …

09:53JA: Would they receive it?

09:55DF: I don’t know. I don’t know.

09:57JA: I don’t mean would they accept it. I mean, if I had the…if it made it to them, would they get it? Do you know?

10:03DF: Yeah. I don’t have their address; I’m not going to provide you their address.

10:06JA: I know their address.

10:07DF: They know where you’re going to be, and if they want to make contact with you, then they can do that.

10:11JA: That’s fine. I know his grandmother’s address, and at least I could mail it, but I don’t know if that’s something...

10:18DF: Well, let me see if I can get someone to take you back. You’re absolutely sure you want to leave it like this?

10:25JA: I don’t know what else to say.

10:36DF: That’s it then. Okay, the next time I see you will probably be in Phoenix. Is that cool?

10:46JA: Do I have a choice?

10:50DF: Well, you’re going there regardless, so it doesn’t matter, but I was hoping that we could resolve this here. It’s obvious by what you’re telling me that you don’t want to resolve this here.

11:01JA: I just can’t.

11:04DF: Well, at the beginning you told me that you couldn’t tell me because you couldn’t tell me who they were, because you didn’t want your family to get hurt.

11:15JA: I can’t, I can’t let my family…

11:17DF: Okay, and now you’re telling me you don’t know who they are, and therefore it doesn’t matter. So there’s nothing you can tell me.

11:23JA: I can give you the best description…

11:25DF: So many inconsistencies that I don’t even want to deal with right now.

11:27JA: I just don’t want my family to get hurt.

11:29DF: Okay. They won’t get hurt. You’re hurting them right now by not telling me the truth. That’s what you’re doing. Okay?

11:39
(DF gets up and leaves room)

(Jodi picks up recorder from the table and examines it. She removes the cassette tape, looks at it, and then puts it back inside).

13:18
(DF enters the room)

13:21DF: Okay, I just talked to the other detectives and they’re going to take you back there in a second. Okay?

(DF reaches across and picks up the tape recorder and takes it with him as he leaves).

14:50
(FO enters the room)

14:52FO: Jodi, umm…they ran across the street to get you something to eat. You’re probably hungry by now. So I figured, in the meantime, while we’re waiting, and you’re just kind of sitting here and hanging out, if you want to draft the rough draft to Travis’ grandmother and family, this would be a good chance for you to do that (FO hands JA paper and pen).

15:14JA: Well, it will just be just a rough draft.

15:16FO: That’s fine.

15:17JA: Can I take it back with me?

15:18FO: Umm…

15:19JA: So I can use it to work on the final draft?

15:21FO: Yeah. We can work something out. Yeah.

15:23JA: Okay.

15:27
(FO leaves the room)

16:41
(FO enters room and puts a brown bag lunch for Jodi on the table. FO leaves the room)

(Jodi eats her lunch, tries to write a letter and even breaks down and cries throughout the remainder of the video)

DF: All right, um…well, um…can I call you again if I need more information or if I have any more questions?JA: Please do.

DF: Do you have any questions I could answer for you?JA: Um…yeah. Do you know when all this happened? I mean I got a call last night, but is there any word on…

0:24DF: Um…sometime between Thursday and uh…last night. We’re not sure yet. We haven’t (unintelligible) had that reported yet (?)JA: Um…and you said that maybe look because he’s a big guy it was…Maybe you can’t talk about this but was um…Was there…Was there like any kind of weapons used…or was there…was there a gun, was there…?

0:48DF: I can’t say what type of weapon was used. But yeah…I…I…I’m guessing there was a weapon used by the type of injuries that were left behind. Um…do you know of him having any weapons at all…in the house?JA: Um…his two fists…

1:55DF: Good. I just got a message from one of my patrol officers that uh… you needed to talk to me about something?JA: Well, I just wanted to offer any assistance that I might have. I was a really good friend of Travis’ and I just...you know ….I just…I know that…I don’t know a lot of anything but…

2:11DF: What have you heard so far?JA: I’ve heard that he was…that he passed away and that um…it was...I don’t know. I’ve heard all kinds of rumors. I heard there was a lot of blood. I heard that um…his roommate found him or his friend found him or people were…I’m sorry. I’m upset, but um…I heard that uh…nobody’s been able to get a hold of him for almost a week which…and that was about the last time I spoke to him, too. Um…which is actually why I thought I…My friend said I should call you anyway and let you know the last time I talked to him. So…

DF: Yeah. Absolutely! I mean any help we can get from anybody who had any kind of contact with him on the phone…on the

2:51JA: I used to talk to him quite regularly. Um…I used to live there. I live in northern California now. Um…but after I moved…I moved a few months ago, and after I moved we kept in touch very regularly and um…kind of fell back a little bit, but we got down to about a couple times a week but I hadn’t heard from him. I… I talked to him on Tuesday night. Um… I looked at my phone records on …on the internet to check. Yeah, I definitely talked to him Tuesday night.

3:22DF: Okay. So was that your cell phone or?JA: Yeah. That was my cell. That’s the only phone I have, so…

3:29DF: Okay. Is this…is this the number that I called?JA: Yeah.

3:33DF: Okay, so and that was Tuesday night. Do you remember about what time?JA: Uh…I think it was … I want to say like a quarter after 9, but I think it was sometime between 8 and 10, but I know it wasn’t as late as 10:00 – probably between 8:30 and 9:30 more so.

3:55DF: Okay, and what did you guys talk about?JA: Um…it was brief. I was um…I was driving out to Utah and, you know, he was like, “Are you going to come up and see me?” and I was like, “No!” and you know… He…he was supposed to make a trip up here…um…at the end of the month because he…We…um…we got this thing that we’re doing. It’s called uh…There’s a book called 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, and its been featured on the Travel Channel and all that, and we sort of got into that last year where we were starting to see all these different places on the list, and we thought 1,000 places is a lot of places but, why not—that would be a fun goal. So, we each kind of have that goal and…and one of the places is the Oregon Coast, um…and the Shakespearean Festival, and so he was going to come up here for that um…and then we were going to go see that and Crater Lake and just different landmarks then…

4:44DF: Was…was that trip already scheduled or just something you guys talked about?JA: Um…it was… (sigh). It was…It wasn’t officially like dated and stuff. I had been trying to reach him so I could solidify my own schedule because I was planning on making a trip down there. Um…you know, but…uh…It was supposed to happen in May and then things just…It was supposed to happen um…last week, and that didn’t work out so he was going to leave for Cancun today and um…and then he said as soon as he gets back from Cancun he was going to continue the trip because he was going to drive up the coast and when he reaches me we’ll go do some things and then he’ll continue on to Washington and see some friends up there. Um…and then I guess that was supposed to happen before the beginning of July because July he was supposed to go to Washington D.C.

5:32DF: Okay. Did he have…did he have any uh issues with anybody here in town—any enemies, anybody that wanted to do him harm?JA: Um…You know he got his tires slashed. It was last year. Um…he was…He said he was worried about that. Um…and I was worried about that. He never locked his doors, and I told… I would tell him, “Lock your doors” and he was like, “You’re not my mom,” you know. And um...I come from…uh…he comes from a bad city. He comes from Ruby near California which is gangs and violence but, and I come from a similar type of neighborhood in California so I always… I can’t say we always locked our doors, and that’s just my habit but he doesn’t have that habit and he lives in a great neighborhood, and it’s never been an issue, and the thing is that nothing has ever been stolen. I think he’s never been…He’s never been, you know, broken into, and he had his tires slashed um…I don’t remember when it was. It was last year sometime around Christmas, I think.

6:30DF: Okay.JA: Um…and…you know, other than that…

6:35DF: Now how would you describe your relationship with him?JA: We dated for … We dated for like five months, and we broke up and we continued actually to see each other…for quite a bit. Um…you know, right up until I moved.

6:53DF: When did you guys, uh…break up?JA: We officially broke up June 29th of last year. I believe that we…Even though we broke up and we were no longer boyfriend and girlfriend, we decided to remain friends, but, you know, like I kind of feel embarrassed talking about this, but it was more like…it was more like fun but it wasn’t boyfriend/girlfriend. It was more like kind of “buddies,” you know what I mean?

7:17DF: Yeah. Okay. So you guys were not like romantically uh…together at any time or …?JA: We…We were intimate. Um…but I wouldn’t say romantic as far as relationship goes, but we were in no way headed toward marriage or talking anything about that. We (unintelligible) probably sometime.

7:41DF: When you say intimate does that include like a sexual relationship with him?JA: Yeah, it does.

7:45DF: Okay. I know it’s kind of embarrassing to talk about stuff like that especially because you don’t know me, so…JA: I know and…Yeah, and if you could please keep it confidential for now because I know that…He’s Mormon and that is seriously looked down upon in the Church and…I mean… I just…I’m telling you this to help in any way I can.

8:05DF: Okay. I appreciate it. Um…so you actually moved back to California a couple of months ago?JA: Yeah, I did.

8:13DF: Okay. What date was that? Do you remember?
8:18JA: Uh… I don’t remember the exact date; I mean I have the dates I rented the U-Haul. It was early April. Early—like before April 10th. It was after the 1st but before the 10th so I’m guessing 7th, 8th, 9th maybe. I’d have to check the dates that I was…

8:34DF: Did you…did you stop by the house when you were at the U-Haul to say good-bye to him?JA: Oh, yeah. In fact, um… after I was…I was almost moved out completely out of my house for about a week afterward, and I just stayed at his house the whole time. I mean I practically lived there um…even when I was there. I spent the night there several times a week while I lived there. Um…I came over and…I cleaned his house a lot. He sort of…He paid me a little bit every month to keep his house nice and clean…sort of like a housekeeper so

DF: Um…did you ever happen to meet any of his roommates at the time…or during the time…JA: Um…. Yeah and (unintelligible) really well at this time. Um…various roommates moved out, one guy moved Utah and one guy moved to Phoenix. Um…Zach is – I don’t know if Zach is still there, if he is...

DF: Yeah, he is.JA: I knew Zach because I met him, and you know, we sort of connected because he’s a photographer like I am, you know. He took the room that …that Aaron lived in previously, so…yeah. Back in

9:36DF: What do you…what do you think about Zach? What do you think his relationship is with uh…with your ex-boyfriend?JA: Um…he seemed like a nice guy when I first met him. He seemed um…just like a normal guy. He’s a return missionary um from …(garbled) Um…he served his mission I think in Arizona (garbled) and he knew Travis from church, so, you know…Yeah, him and his girlfriend were there. I think…I think there was some alcohol there at one time and Travis um… was suspicious about it, but he said he used it for cooking, you know, that’s fine, because Mormon’s don’t drink alcohol, but Um…

DF: Well, some do… (laughs) JA: They’re not supposed to, and Travis, that’s another thing when it came to that, we call it the Word of Wisdom, no tobacco, alcohol, drugs or coffee or tea, and he was just super, super, super strict on that…you know. He wouldn’t even take Excedrin for a headache because it had caffeine. He was so strict on that. I’m a little less strict on that. I’ll pop Excedrin any day but…

10:43DF: There were a lot of Diet Cokes in the fridge.JA: Yeah, they’re not Travis’. (both laughing) I can guarantee that! He wouldn’t even touch Coke, so it’s one of his other roommates.

10:52DF: Okay, and that was around April that you last saw him, right?JA: Early April…

DF: You haven’t been back in town since then?JA: No, I haven’t, no. Um…I talked to…

DF: Somebody had mentioned your name and you had been back in town for like a week or a couple of days…JA: Oh, I’ve…I’ve been…I’ve been thinking about going there and so yeah, I’ve been definitely planning on heading down there. Um…

11:15DF: But you haven’t physically been here since you left?JA: Since I moved, no, I haven’t. So…I was going to go this week, actually, while he was in Cancun and stay at his house, but it’s not in the budget. So…

11:30DF: Well, was that something that you guys had scheduled that you were going to come down and stay at his house when he’s not home?JA: Yeah…um…no, actually. That’s what I e-mailed him about last week because it was kind of last minute because I was going to go…I’m looking at a calendar here. I was gonna’ go not this week but the next, and then he was gonna’ come up here that following week which was the 4th of July, and um…it all sounds kind of weird. We’re all travelers. Um…and I figured, you know, it would be a good idea if I would have a place to stay. His house is open all the time to friends. I mean anybody in his business or anybody that comes to visit he gives up his bed. He’ll sleep on the couch. He lets them have the whole room. Um… so it just didn’t seem like…He said that the door is always open so I would have felt totally okay just showing up and staying at his house and eating his frozen dinners, etc. etc., and he would have been fine with that, too, and I just, you know. He said just always give me a heads up so I asked him, you know, let me know if that’s cool. If not, I’ll make other arrangements, and I never heard back.

12:28DF: And when was that e-mail sent out?JA: Uh…just a few days ago. I’m beside the computer so I can check right now for ya’…

DF: Okay. Yeah, if you could do that, please…?
JA: Yeah. Hang on a second. Just logged into my account.

12:46DF: What’s his e-mail address?JA: Yeah. To his e-mail.

DF: Yeah. What is his e-mail address, do you know, offhand?JA: E-mail is um… travis.alexander@gmail.com. (Pause) Um…let’s see. I sent one on June 7th. “Haven’t heard back from you…” He got a little bit upset when I said I wasn’t driving out to see him, but he…He gets upset really easily. Um…I don’t know. He likes to guilt me a little bit and we kind of guilt each other sometimes.

DF: So you guys still have a fairly decent relationship as friends?JA: We…we did. Uh…we had …

13:33DF: Well everyone I talked to said that you guys…that your relationship was kind of rocky and uh…it got a little…a little crazy at times or…JA: It did. Um…What happened was, when I…I broke up with Travis around…last year, because it was all really dumb. It was a bunch of drama. I had a suspicion that he was cheating on me, and so I…I looked in his phone and found all these text messages and like it just all blew up, and it was like…I just realized we couldn’t trust each other so, I mean, we broke up at that point but we were still…We were still attracted to each other and we still loved each other, so it wasn’t the best thing, but we still hung out all the time together. And, uh…it didn’t really help either of us to move on because I haven’t really dated anyone since, and he told me that he hadn’t dated anyone since but then he told me afterward that he had so… It’s all been kind of weird because we kept our dating lives sort of from each other, like a don’t ask don’t tell policy, sort of. And uh…it was…I think it was…It worked out…It was more convenient for us. I figured, you know, if he doesn’t have a girlfriend then I’m okay coming over, and as long as he doesn’t think that I was with anybody then he was fine, too. So it was just the less we knew about each other dating wise or romantic wise the better that we were…the better off we were. So… um… it was sent June 7th. Yeah. (unintelligible)

15:06DF: What town are you in again?JA: I’m sorry?

DF: What town are you in again?JA: I’m in Yreka, California. Y-R-E-K-A

15:19DF: Y-R-E-K-AJA: Uh huh.

15:22DF: Where is that at?JA: It is um…15 minutes from Oregon and it’s on Interstate 5.

15:27DF: Okay. So it’s on the Oregon border.JA: Yeah.

15:32DF: Okay. Is that close to the coast? JA: No, unfortunately.

15:47DF: Okay. Um… I have some other questions. I’m trying to remember what they were. I mean…if you kind of lived in the house for awhile you knew the surroundings, the kind of furniture he had, the bedding and stuff. Can you describe his bedroom bedding and stuff for me?JA: Um…

~~~~~~~~~~
16:06DF: I know it’s an unusual question, but…JA: No, that’s fine. Um…I spent a lot of time in there. Um…He’s got like, I don’t know if it’s like Egyptian cotton or whatever but it’s a really nice brown um…linen and it’s soft. It’s not like flannel but it’s soft, and uh…he always brags to everyone about his IntelliGel bed. It’s really comfy. Um so he has got a great mattress. It’s like…apparently it’s like this $5,000 mattress that he picked up for really, really cheap because it was a showroom thing or it was a return or … Somehow he got a really sweet deal on it so… It’s a King size. I don’t know if it’s a California or what but it’s a King size bed. It’s kind of like...I think it’s like a sleigh bed. It’s dark wood. Um…

16:49DF: Okay. But the bedding you said is like mainly like a brown linen, I mean it’s cotton linen.JA: Yeah. He has. It’s maybe different patterns on the sheets versus the comforter but the sheets are brown and the comforter is brown and the pillowcases are brown and…

17:04DF: What…so the color of the comforter is brown as well? Does it have any type of pattern or like uh… tassels or edging …?JA: I think it has stripes and they had like…and they’re not like colored stripes. They’re just like stripes in the brown pattern so…

17:24 DF: Oh like, you know, it’s dark brown but it’s got a little bit darker brown like threading…JA: Yeah. You could see that there’s a pattern there. And the sheet is maybe more of like a checkered thing, I think—if I remember correctly. And his cover, too, his bedspread is like—it’s a down comforter that’s white and then it’s got like uh… I don’t know what you would call it but it has special name.

DF: It’s like a duvet cover?JA: Yes. A duvet.

17:54DF: What does a duvet look like?JA: Um…it comes like…like its got buttons on the end and it covers the whole thing and it’s like an actual comforter on the sizes of the duvet which is what you pull off to wash or, you know, or you can…that kind of thing. So we, many times, it’s so hard to get in there with one person so we kind of just grabbed the corners and we pull it in together on one side and then you just sort of fluff it out and then button up the buttons.

18:26DF: Yeah, that down kind of just shoved over in the one corner and it doesn’t want to spread out.JA: Yeah, exactly.

18:32DF: Um…so it didn’t have like any…any type of uh… edging or tassels or anything like that that you know of like a light brown JA: Not that I remember.

DF: Is there anything in the house that resembled anything with some type of small, tan, rope-ish kind of material or edging or anything like that, a blanket maybe..?JA: He may have pillows. He may have had pillows. Um…Yeah! He has pillows on his…on his bed, not on his bed but on the chair that’s next to his bed. Yeah. There’s those! Um…there’s also a round pillow that he uses. He makes his bed and there’s just one that he puts in the center. There may be some kind of tassel thing on that.

19:19DF: All right. Do you know anybody back here still that still has contact with him?JA: Uh… yeah, lots of people. All kinds of people!

19:32DF: Is that how you found out about what…what had happened?JA: A friend of mine, Dan Freeman, called me last night. I met Dan through Travis.

19:40DF: Dan Freedman?JA: Freeman. F-R-E-E-M-A-N.

19:46DF: Yeah. Okay. We talked to him as well.JA: I met him last year with his sister when we all took a trip out to the Grand Canyon…

DF: So he called you last night and told you what happened?JA: Yeah. Yeah. He called. He didn’t have a lot of information.

20:09DF: Any idea of what everybody’s talking about? What they’re saying? What their suspicions are?JA: Um…They’re saying …well…everything that I’ve heard was that, and I got a lot of my information from Bishop Layton, um more details. Um…and he basically that day they took everybody and separated them, and I don’t know who everybody is. I’m assuming Zach, because he was there , his girlfriend, um….because I called Zach’s cell phone and she couldn’t tell me anything but she answered, and she said there are a lot of people here that I don’t know but um…Zach’s not here, so it didn’t make sense and I just… I was confused but she couldn’t tell me anything so I didn’t get a lot out of her but Bishop Layton said he was there for four hours and they interviewed everybody and then they all went to the police station and um that it… that they’re treating it as a suspicious, excuse me…as a suspicious death and I heard some of my friends, um Dave…Hall that there was a lot of blood, and I don’t know if that’s just a rumor that’s going around or true but, and I also heard that his services will be in California but that they haven’t released his body to his grandma yet, so um…that’s all I really heard so far.

21:29DF: Well, I can tell you that we’re investigating it as a homicide. JA: Okay.

DF: It’s not a suspicious death anymore. It’s pretty obvious and…it’s important for us to find out why somebody would want to do harm to him.JA: Uh…Exactly.

21:47DF: Um…what kind of stuff he was possibly involved in or um… or maybe it just could have been as simple as a burglary, an intruder, or something that had gone wrong. JA: One thing, he’s so… when you said…like when they said suspicious death I thought, well, he’s trying to shed pounds for Cancun so he looks good in boxers or a bathing suit or whatever, or swim trunks, and um…You know, I know that he or thought he takes supplements and he works out really, really hard like out at this very intense routine and um…he has these heavy dumbbells that he uses and he’s so strong. I mean there were a couple times we tried to wrestle just for fun and he showed me some moves, and that’s just not like…I don’t see how anyone, unless maybe there were two people, I don’t see how anyone could overpower him unless they were…

22:39DF: He’s a pretty good sized guy.JA: Yeah, he was close to 200 pounds, I think.

22:45DF: Yeah. Yeah. It would take I would say two people, uh maybe more to kind of overpower him. I’ve tried with officers…working and stuff…to take down a woman at 135 pounds who is out of control and it’s difficult to control, you know, somebody like that

23:05
(Jodi’s Aunt Sue yawns)JA: Yeah. Um…

23:06DF: No ideas come to mind, huh, why somebody would want to hurt him? JA: He talked for

DF: Did he owe somebody money? Did he have any worries or concerns about anybody?
23:17JA: He did owe people money but …they were all good friends. They weren’t… like it wasn’t like a bad situation. It was...in fact they were…there was one family that loaned him money that is very, very wealthy, from what I understand, and it’s not like it hurt them to lend him the money. Of course, they expected him to pay it back, and he had a very reasonable timeline, and they also had a really good collateral in case he didn’t pay it back. Um…they…they owned a piece of stock that he owned so if they didn’t pay him back it was like $6,000 or something. Um…yeah it was $6,000, but if they didn’t…if he didn’t pay them back on time then they would just keep his stock which would eventually be worth over $25,000. So I mean I don’t think they were worried about that at all. Uh...that’s the Hyatt (sp?) family. His friend Hyatt was there last night. Um…but I don’t…that was when he was struggling financially several months back and … and um… I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him about how that was going since.

24:12JA: But I know that that…

24:16DF: What’s the situation with the car that was, somebody mentioned a BMWJA: Yeah. I’m buying his BMW.

DF: Okay because we found a check, it was written by you to him, I think it was last month.JA: Mmm hmm.. Yeah. Yeah, I recently just mailed him a check. Um…he…I know as a matter of a few other things. He um…I’m making payments to him.

24:40DF: Okay. Hang on. You still have that car right now?JA: No. It’s actually not in my possession. I did the dumbest thing. Um…I went and hooked it up to the U-Haul. Everything was cool and set to go. I got the dolly (?) that where the back wheels are on the ground because it was cheaper, and the U-Haul guy said, “Okay, drive it up here. Okay, Stop, Brake,” and everything was cool, and I stopped the car and turned it off. Got out of the car with the door open so they could look at everything and they shut the door and said, “You’re good to go,” and I took off, and this is going to sound really dumb, and I realize now this is not how you tow a car, but I left it in first gear.

25:12DF: Yeah.JA: and I started heading down the highway and I blew the engine to smithereens. Um…It looked like it gave birth all over the highway. There was just black oil everywhere and um…So it’s sitting at Wes’ Auto something last time I checked um…16th and Mesa, and uh…they’ve been acting really nice about keeping it until Travis figures out what he can do. We called lawyers about it, and my lawyer said um…you know, have your insurance fix it, and his lawyer said your insurance might not fix it because it might be considered mechanical so that’s the last we talked about it. We’ve been um… He’s been real busy and hasn’t had a lot of time to attend to it, and I have a vehicle right now but not for much longer because I have to give it back to the bank, and so…um…you know.

25:56DF: When did you mail that payment, the end of May?JA: Uh…it was a few weeks ago. Yeah. It must have been.

DF: Okay. So you’re still making payments for that?JA: Oh, yeah. In fact, that’s my first payment because I just…We just did this car deal like right before I moved, and we’ve been…Oh! We have a buyer’s agreement, too, I think, that I checked out and emailed to him um…but uh…We have … like he said just get on your feet, you know, and then start making payments, and the agreement was x amount per month whenever I get paid, so…I finally got a job and …

26:35DF: What…was $200 the amount? JA: Yeah. It was $100 a month from then on, and if I could pay more, pay more please, you know.

26:50DF: Okay. Well, we did talk to certain people and um… (sighs) I don’t want to tell you this. I don’t want to make you feel bad, but…JA: Uh huh…

27:00DF: Uh…there’s…They didn’t have the best of things to say about you. JA: Okay.

DF: They felt that you were…uh…either taking advantage of him or um…just, you know hanging around when you weren’t wanted. Um…they mentioned that you would sometimes, you know, end up going into his house. You were in his house when he didn’t want you there, and you were asked to leave but you would return. There was also some talk about you, you know, spying on his e-mail and Facebook accounts those kinds of things…JA: Oh, he gave me his um…He gave me his Facebook password and his MySpace password, and I gave him my Facebook password and my Gmail account password, and the reason we did that is that because, it was kind of dumb. We did that months and months ago and we thought, um… what can we do to try to re-establish trust between us, and, you know, why don’t we start with that, and so that’s what we did and you know, it just didn’t work. He got really upset finally and he’s like, “You know, this isn’t working,” and I said, “All right, this is too much of a headache, let’s just change our passwords.” So we did. We changed our passwords after that.

28:15DF: How long ago did you guys change them?JA: Uh…I changed mine, gosh…not long ago, probably three weeks ago maybe? And, I don’t know about his because I haven’t once he made clear he wasn’t comfortable with that anymore I didn’t even try to get back into his account anymore, so…

28:36DF: Yeah. I mean I’ve been married almost 20 years and I don’t have my wife’s e-mail password. (laughs) That’s really…JA: I know…

28:42DF: You know you just have to trust sometimes.JA: That’s true. That’s true, and I told him. We’ve had hours upon hours of conversation and I said, “You know, I just don’t know if I could ever trust you again,” you know, and…he doesn’t know if he could ever trust me again because I always wanted to get back into his phone and find out does he really have something going on or what, ‘cause you know he did at one point um…you know, and so, he said, “Yeah, I understand that, but if we were married you would have all my passwords to everything because there wouldn’t be anything to worry about” and I thought, “Well, that’s nice,” you know? But we’re not married (laughs) so… And as far as getting into his e-mails, that never happened. Um…what he has on his computer is um…He would oftentimes just leave the computer on and he’ll leave his G-mail e-mail up, and there were times when I’d hop on the computer to look up other things, and if his G-mail window was open then I would just close it…if that would constitute getting into his e-mail.

29:33DF: Um…you know I had to mention that to you because we are getting a search warrant for your e-mails, or you know G-mail and Facebook, and we can tell where those things were accessed from, and I just want to make it clear that um…you know, if you did access it from somewhere else or at a certain time, you know if you access it from California we’re going to be able to know.JA: Yeah, I’ll tell you right now that I did.

DF: Okay.JA: He gave me his password. The only account that I’ve accessed though was the MySpace and G-mail because those were the only passwords I had.

30:21DF: How long ago? When was the last time you actually accessed those?JA: Oh, weeks ago. We had um…We had a conversation where, it’s like we…he made it clear that he wasn’t comfortable with that anymore, and um…and I said, “That’s okay,” and he…and I changed my email account password because he got into that, too, and he saw another guy’s email there um…and gave me a hard time about it and so, it just was dumb. You know, we’re both trying to move on. We’re both… I don’t know. He was weird.

30:57DF: It seems like there were a lot of jealousy issues?JA: I think that might have been on both parts. For me it wasn’t so much jealousy as it was like…I just …I just wanted to know like…I just wanted him to be honest, and for him, I think there…One of the reasons I moved was because we were spending too much time together and we were not moving on and um…wasn’t able to. I mean, I guess I could have dated other people but our social circles were so small that any time he heard about something it would just (unintelligible)

31:30DF: Did you move down here the first time because of him?JA: Yeah. I moved there because of him and I moved away because of him. Primarily. I also moved away for financial reasons. There are three main reasons why I moved here. 1) my family, 2) financially, 3) because of Travis and the main reason I moved there was because of Travis.

DF: Because when we first arrived on the scene and started talking to people and some of his closest friends um…you know began mentioning your name as, “Hey, you need to call her because she probably knows what happened to him or she possibly had something to do with it.”JA: Oh, gosh. No, I …

32:09DF: That’s how bad it was getting, and you know, I needed to talk to you to find out why they would say something like that—uh…why they would start pointing the finger in your direction right away.JA: Um…I don’t know. Maybe because I’m the ex-girlfriend and we had lots of fights?

32:28DF: Was there a lot of issues…uh…you know, I mean obviously it wasn’t…you know it wasn’t a great relationship, uh…JA: It was great for awhile until we …until…You know we started fighting because I did one thing and got into his phone because I had a suspicion that he wasn’t being faithful and I found a bunch of text messages that were no good and um…Rather than being an adult about it and confronting him I kept it in and I kind of let it fester, and I was miserable and he didn’t know why, and I wanted to tell him but I was worried it would just lead to an unnecessary fight and I realized this was no kind of a relationship and finally it all came out and he was really apologetic but we just both realized that neither of us could be in an adult relationship and that was at the end of last year so, at that point, it was over. We continued to see each other, you know, a long time after that.

33:29DF: Well, I’m glad I did get a hold of you and you did call me because it kind of clears up a lot of the questions I had and a lot of the concerns. I don’t think it’s what these people thought, you know, was going on so…JA: Yeah. I should probably. I should probably tell you that, you know, Travis, when he got upset, he would send me um…really mean e-mails, Um…he would send me mean text messages and things. Um…you’ll find probably some stuff on his Facebook. I know for sure you’ll find them on Facebook and definitely on his G-mail and you’re welcome to access all of my accounts, too, if you want.

DF: Okay.
34:12JA: With Travis…

34:16DF: We’re probably going to get our subpoena for all his Facebook, G-mail, you know everything just to see who he was communicating with, what he was saying, um…what they were saying to him. I’m not sure how far back…we usually go six months to a year.JA: Okay

34:34DF: But in a case like this, you know we need to know who had some type of beef with him – why they would do something like this. You know, I hate calling people over the phone but, you know, it’s like I said, it is a homicide investigation, and uh…It was an angry situation, and…and when we see scenes like this, um…you know the first thing we think is these people hated each other. Somebody went in there to hurt him and…and they did, and they hurt him really bad. And he’s a big guy, and it would take, like I mentioned to you before, it would take more than one person to do this to him.JA: Can you. Was he…

35:29DF: I was…I was just hoping maybe you could kind of point me in the right direction. I’m talking to everybody that he knows that knows…

35:38JA: You know you might want to talk to a guy named Thomas Brown. Um…and I don’t think that…Honestly, I haven’t seen or heard from him since he was kicked out. Um…I think his last name was Brown. I could try to find him on…on LDS Linkup.com but um…It was…You know that was so long ago, though. That was last spring of 2007, March even, and what happened was he got kicked out because he was considered like borderline sexual predator—not like a rapist, but coming on to girls and…and you know that kind of thing, and it’s just really looked down upon in the church and so he was disfellowshipped and Travis said you need to get out, you know, get your stuff out of my house. It wasn’t a friendly situation. It was said over the phone because he and I were in uh…Missouri and somewhere back east and just touring and um… and um…Thomas was

36:32DF: So he ended up kicking him out at that time?JA: Yeah, he kicked him out at the time but…Thomas, you know, he’s a really big guy but he doesn’t seem like this – he doesn’t seem violent. He seemed pretty gentle. He just seemed like--a little bit ****gish but like he was trying to act the part not because he was that. Maybe because he thought it might attract kicks or something, I don’t know. Um…so he seems honestly, like I didn’t know him that well but he seemed like a big, dumb teddy bear.

JA: You know I just wanted to say that Travis and I had…we had an on-off kind of relationship. Um…I…we just weren’t talking a lot… the last several weeks. Um… a couple times a week and I keep saying, “What if? What if I just had gone down there... what if I never moved and I would have been there, I don’t know…”

37:39DF: So you continued to talk this whole time, huh?JA: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely! We…I mean…It was more sporadic. It was more sporadic. But, um…we usually talked late at night, like 12 -- anywhere between 12 a.m. and…or 1 a.m. and like 2, or 3, or 4 in the morning. He was kind of like um…

37:56DF: Did he have any other cell phones because uh…well, we found one cell phone.JA: Um…No! He…I’m pretty sure he didn’t. Otherwise I’d know about it.
He had his uh…Verizon cell phone and he had his landline.

38:22DF: (Voice recording) This was sent to my cell phone from June 21, 2008 from Jodi Arias

You have one saved message. First Saved Message

38:31JA: Hi Detective Flores. This is Jodi Arias calling in regards to uh…Travis Alexander. Um…It’s Saturday, I’m not… I can’t be sure what time, but um…maybe you’re off, and so I hope you’re enjoying your day off. If not, if you could give me a call back. My phone number is 831-402-1901. Thanks! Talk to you soon. Bye.

38:59DF: How long did you guys actually know each other?JA: We met in September of 2006 at the MGM Grand.

DF: 2006?JA: Yeah! And that was the Prepaid Legal International convention.

39:13DF: Okay.JA: Where tens of thousands of people go.

39:16DF: And when did you actually start dating?JA: Um. Not for awhile. We met in September. Uh…the following weekend he invited me to church, and the following Wednesday of that Sunday he gave me a copy of the Book of Mormon. I started reading it. I got baptized November 26th. Uh…we would talk a lot and hang out a lot and we kind of had like a thing and there definitely was an attraction and an interest but we weren’t officially dating until about February of 2007, early February I would say. Um… and I think that just a string of events sort of pushed that together. Travis has kind of a commitment uh…phobia… I would guess you could say…?

40:11JA: I’ve been in relationships before where the…the other guy wasn’t faithful, and there’s like a distinctive gut feeling that you just have, and…that I’ve noticed…’cause I’ve been in relationships where they were faithful, at least to my knowledge. They were totally faithful um…and that gut feeling isn’t there. So I had this feeling with Travis and I gently asked him about it. He got really upset, and he’s like, “No, there’s nothing there. Don’t worry about it.” And I knew he was on phone texting a lot, and I knew he was texting these girls and I was like…um… I was like, Um…“Well, are you…What about your text messages?” and he’s like, “Look, I can be flirtatious but there’s nothing going on.” And I said, “Okay.” So uh…this was last year I think in June. (clears her throat). And, one day he was taking a nap, and I felt, this is one of the reasons we lost all of our trust. Um…I just…I shouldn’t have done this, but I grabbed his phone and I looked at his text messages, and I found there were tons of girls that I had never heard of, and I knew that he knew a lot of people from the business, so I didn’t worry too much about it, but what bothered me was that there were um…not only were there some flirtatious like I should have expected which bothered me but it wasn’t necessarily a crime, um…but there were plenty of uh…uh…(sighs) There were like plans like…things like um…”Oh…where do you want to meet, Oh, I don’t know, where’s the best place for us..Wherever the best place for us to make out is,” and I’m like, “What? Oh, my gosh!” We’d only been dating for a few months at this point, and he always said, “Well, we’re not dating anybody else,” and to him, that was I think reasonable enough, ‘cause I think in his mind he was making out with other girls but he wasn’t dating them was okay, and the only reason I think that’s true is because of what we continued to do while he was dating and I didn’t realize that either. Um…so I confronted him about it. Actually, I didn’t confront him at first. I should have been an adult about it and confronted him but I held it in for a few weeks and then it all came out, and that’s when we broke up, and so I just realized that I didn’t feel like I could trust him fully to be monogamous and I don’t think that he could trust me fully to not get back in his phone some day and I try to find something out.

42:11DF: What did you do then the whole time you were down here then? You just kind of tried to work?JA: Um…I…Yeah! I guess I figured, you know, like maybe this is the Mormon land of opportunity. Honestly? That’s kind of the way I looked at it? (laughs)

42:28DF: So you just kind of hung around town doing your thing until April or so, whenever you left?JA: Yeah, I hung around. I was in the University 6 Ward—went there. He was in his Desert Ridge Ward and we…We didn’t live that far apart. So, I mean, I was over there a lot—um…not a lot lot because he had his own social circle friends from church that I didn’t really want to interact with (Jodi laughs) because I…I sensed that maybe there was a little bit of awkwardness there because of Lisa and because of Elena (sp?) and I didn’t…

42:59DF: Oh, that’s right. (Unintelligible – sounds like…He went out with Lisa right after that…)

43:02DF: You mentioned…I mean obviously you guys dated before and…JA: Yeah, we did. We dated about

43:07DF: You were kind of just still really good friends but not, you know, romantically seeing each anymore?JA: Uh…not exactly (laughs). Um…um…we broke up last…

DF: Well, kind of?JA: Yeah, and I would say there was…there was certainly a romantic side to it you could say or an intimate side to it, um…but uh…we weren’t exactly on the path to marriage or anything like that and we both knew that.

43:35DF: Now some people had some unpleasant stuff to say about you and uh… I don’t know why. I mean I talked to you and you seem like a good person and, you know, I they were just saying that you were kind of obsessive after the breakup and things like that. What was going on to make them think that?JA: The only thing I can think of and I realize that is because I was at his house a lot. Um…but I didn’t go to his house unless I was invited over or unless he knew I was coming over. Um…he would send me text messages late at night saying, “Hey, I’m getting sleepy …(dot, dot, dot) and (unintelligible) (dot, dot, dot) and that was like…that became like my cue. That became like our code word for “I’m falling asleep, you can come over now, and sneak into my room and come wake me up” kind of thing and so um…that would happen a lot and uh…I…

44:23DF: Uh…I mean I don’t want to make this unpleasant or anything but, I mean, was there still a sexual relationship going on after that?JA: Yeah. There was.

44:34DF: And you were actually out of town so it was in April when you left?JA: Yeah, it was April. I spent um…I had…My friend Rachel that I originally moved down with gave me a futon to sleep on and I gave that back um…about a week, week and a half prior to moving. Her & her husband came out with this truck and they loaded it up because they were just lending it to me, and I didn’t want to move it. So they came and got it and I didn’t have a bed, and he was like, you know, “You just come stay with me.” And so I pretty much stayed there (clears throat twice) for the last week.

45:06DF: Yeah, his roommates said something about you, you know, the last day you had a U-Haul and you were leaving. Uh…you had stopped by to say goodbye or something?JA: Yeah, I had the U-Haul and I…I was already there but I parked it around the corner because it was huge and I had my car on the back of it so I couldn’t park it right out in front of his house, so there’s a…there’s a little uh…you go just past his house around the corner. I had the U-Haul parked there.

45:32DF: Okay. Do you remember what day in April that was?JA: I don’t. I want to say…I keep thinking the 9th but before you quote me on that I can …I can check.

45:43DF: But towards the beginning of April, sometime around there?JA: Yeah! It was more like…more towards the middle but it was already…maybe toward the beginning. Yeah! Because originally I was supposed to leave early April like April 1st – April Fools, but I ended up staying um…another 4 or 5 days.

46:05DF: You guys took a lot of pictures. Actually, he just bought a…he had just purchased a camera.JA: Yeah – I remember that!

46:10DF: I mean we found the box in his house and everything. JA: Yeah. He um…

46:14DF: Did you…Did you help him buy that or?JA: I did. Yeah. I was…I was living here…He called me for advice and I was on the phone with him

46:24DF: I never saw somebody who knew what they were doing before buy a camera.JA: Yeah, and I guess because I’m a photographer…He texted me and he was like, “What do you think of this camera?” and I texted back, “Well, what about this?” and finally I was like, “Just call me because it’s too complicated.” So he called me and he was going over … I was like, “Ask her this” (unintelligible) sales rep and “What about this and this… and where is the flash located and megapixels and the brand and I was like Don’t get anything Kodak,” you know, just different things. So…eventually he settled on… I don’t remember what he got but it was…it sounded like it was a really nice camera.

46:51DF: Do you remember when he bought that camera?JA: April maybe? I know it was after I moved. It could have been in May.

46:59DF: Okay.
JA: It could have been in May. Um…I know it was after I moved up here because I was here. I was on the phone with him…purchasing it…

47:06DF: You never got to see the camera then or anything?JA: No, and I’m trying to remember…

47:12DF: Well, we…The reason I’m asking is because we found his camera, and, you know, it’s pretty much ruined, and we didn’t know why.JA: Oh!

47:20DF: You know I can’t discuss why but or how it’s ruined but, you know, we just, we have no idea why somebody would, you know, destroy his camera and uh…JA: Oh!

47:32DF: and wonder if you could describe it to me but obviously you haven’t seen it and you’ve never touched it, never seen it so…JA: No. Um…I think…I’m thinking there’s a picture of him on Facebook where he took a picture of himself in the mirror…

43:42DF: Okay.JA: And I think that’s his camera, so I mean…I can’t tell what it is though because the picture isn’t really sharp and it’s small resolution but there’s a picture of him, a profile picture of him on Facebook where he kind of is looking…

49:16DF: ‘Cause we’re not…we’re still not sure what day, you know, this incident happened.JA: Mmm hmmm

49:20DF: We’re trying to figure out, you know, who had contact with him and… I know I talked to youJA: I…

49:26DF: a couple weeks ago about what was going on but it was kind of brief and I was just trying to JA: Uh huh…

49:31DF: get to everybody who JA: Yeah…

DF: was near the area or whatever…but um…can you tell me what was going on, let’s see, starting on Monday, I think it was the 2nd or when you had contact with him or the last time you talked to him…
49:46JA: Yeah, I think...I know that I talked to him early Monday morning uh…which would have … I was just up late Sunday night for example and uh I probably talked to him…it may have been a good 45 minutes that…that morning and we were talking about um…how he was…He had a conversation with another person about Gordon Hinckley and they were…it was really a conversation. I know he was just talking a lot about what was said there and uh…I think we probably talked till about 4:00 in the morning. I think.

50:16DF: Wow!JA: Yeah, we were…He was a night owl; I’m a night owl and it wasn’t a really long conversation. We’ve had conversations that have lasted hours and hours but this one was probably only…I want to say 45 minutes. It may have been longer. I guess I could check.

50:30DF: And that was late at night?JA: Well, technically it was early Monday morning.
50:35

50:35DF: Okay.JA: That was on the 2nd. So um….yeah, that was primarily what that one consisted of and, you know. He knew I was taking a road trip that week and he was kind of guilting me ‘cause I wasn’t going to Arizona, I was going to Utah. Um…

50:47DF: Okay. Why was there a conference or something in Arizona as well or?
50:53JA: It was um…The primary reason, and I didn’t tell Travis this, but the primary reason I was going there was to meet somebody. Um…and you know, we…we weren’t like totally open about our dating lives just because it was just an area where we just kind of decided it would be best to not give each other all those details, and so, you know, it’s because we had a past (unintelligible) of war (?). You know, we kept each other like moderately informed, like he told me a little bit about this person, a little bit about this person but we didn’t go into a lot of details, so I didn’t tell him that I was making this big trip out to Utah to go see somebody. (clears her throat). I think he suspected it, though. He was just like, “Well, who are you going out there to see?” and I’m like, “Oh, nobody, I’m just going out there to see friends” ‘cause we both have um…a mutual circle of friends in Utah from Prepaid Legal, so I told him that that was the reason I was going. There’s a briefing out there it’s called a business briefing which happens every week on Thursday nights so um…I was leaving for that and, you know, there was that reason because I knew I would see a lot of my friends that night but also to spend time with my other friend that I was meeting, and his name is Ryan. Um… so…I talked to him that day, and later on that morning I got on the road. Um…and my car isn’t the best mechanically, so I stopped in Redding at the airport to rent a car and someone had driven me there. My future, soon-to-be sister-in-law drove me there. Um…(clears throat) and… let’s see…I got the car, came back to my brother’s house and took a nap for awhile because I had been up all night, and then I got on the road and I went to Santa Cruz and I met up with some other friends from the Monterey area.

52:28DF: Okay.JA: So, I have lots of friends there, and I stayed the night at a friend’s house there and visited with some other friends uh…the next day and then drove to L.A. so that I could see my uh…other friend’s baby. I’m a photographer. I don’t know if I told you that.

52:55DF: Yeah.JA: Um… But yeah, I’m a photographer. She just recently had a baby and I was trying to build my profile with infants and things like that…

53:04DF: Who were you visiting there again?JA: Her name is Laura Brewer. She actually never called me back. She did call me back but she called me back too late, so I couldn’t just wait around ‘cause I had an itinerary.

DF: She was just a friend or?JA: She um…she’s a really cool friend. I dated her brother for about four years so we’re a lot like family still.

53:22DF: Oh, okay.
53:25JA: Hang on just a quick second, I’m sorry.

53:49JA: Are you still there?DF: Yeah.

53:51JA: I’m sorry. My phone—I got to figure it out. Sorry, I’m just getting out of my car. It’s just a little distracting. DF: No problem.

54:30DF: How about 9-10…anywhere in there.JA: Somewhere between there. Yeah, it was kind of late evening. I mean for us that’s not late, but…

54:38DF: What was the purpose of that call?JA: Um…just calling to check in and say, “Hey” and let him know just, “Hi…” (laughs)

DF: Okay.
54:48JA: I was just calling people because I was bored and I was on the road.

54:50DF: Oh, so you were on the road at that time?JA: Yeah. It was real brief. Um…he was…He was nice and cordial but he was kind of acting…like he had hurt feelings ‘cause he knew I wasn’t planning…

DF: Oh, I see. Tthe reason this actually occurred is people are saying they kind of lost contact with him maybe TuesdayJA: On Tuesday?

DF: Tuesday or Wednesday some people aren’t sure. They’re trying to think back andJA: I…I talked to him last Tuesday and I…I’m sure I called him. I may have called him Wednesday. I know I called him again from the road, twice. I sent him a couple of text messages. I sent him a picture.

55:29DF: Did you actually talk to him, though, when you were on the road?JA: Um…yeah, but it was…it was when I

DF: When you first started…
55:37JA: Yeah. Yeah. It was... We were… Yeah. I did talk to him. I’m sure that was Tuesday night.

55:43DF: Okay. JA: And uh…so I figured he was either in California ‘cause he was planning to go there um…that week, I think, because he had to…I know he had to go to California sometime before Cancun because he was going to leave his dog with his grandmother.

56:00DF: Okay.JA: Um…

56:02DF: Do you remember what time on Tuesday night it was that you talked to him?JA: Oh…it was dark. It was… I think it was like maybe 10, maybe 10 o’clock? Or 9:30 or …

DF: At that time you were still kind of…were you still heading to L.A. area or were you already going to Utah?JA: I was in Pasadena when I talked to him. I think I was.. I think I had just left Starbucks or something. I don’t remember. I don’t know if I had gotten gas there or what …Starbucks and talking to him…

DF: Now, what was the conversation about?
56:39JA: It was really brief. It was um… 2 or 3 minutes and I said, “Hey, I’m on the road so” and going, you know, he knew I was headed to Utah, and I just called because I called my sister and I think I called…I may have called Ryan. I don’t know if I called him yet at that point, but um…I was waiting around for awhile for Laura and I didn’t know where she lived and I couldn’t call her brother because he was at work, and I didn’t just want to show up at her house because I hadn’t heard back from her so, um…I was just killing time and called him…talked to him briefly and…and uh

57:14DF: That’s about the last time people were able to get a hold of him as well…and the usual and people were saying, “Yeah, we texted him and called him and then pretty soon his…I think his voice mail was full.”JA: Yeah. That’s unusual ‘cause he deletes messages--like he doesn’t save anything even if it’s halfway sentimental, like he rarely saves that stuff.

57:35DF: So the next time you tried to call him you weren’t able to get a hold of him?JA: Uh…no. I left him a message. Um…and I sent him text messages and he said he doesn’t always pick up but he’s usually pretty good, and he doesn’t always respond but I didn’t hear from him for like two days and I called him again. I didn’t want to be obsessive about it um…because, you know, we’re not together anymore, and I’m just like…I don’t like calling him too much, but he’d call me or I’d call him and it was a pretty good balance but um…At one point it was like…at what point do I start calling friends that live there? You know? That thought crossed my mind, but I was like, “No, he’s in California.” You know? He’s going to Cancun.

58:21DF: So you didn’t get to meet with her then?JA: I didn’t. So I hung out there for awhile at Starbucks and, you know, just refilled and all that and talked on the phone for a little bit and got on the road and went to Utah. Um…(pause) Slept in my car. (laughs)

58:43DF: That’s a long drive from L.A.
58:46JA: It’s about…It’s about nine hours, so yeah, it’s actually just as long to go from L.A. to West Jordan as it is to go from Yreka to L.A.

58:59DF: Um…Let’s see. So the meeting in Utah, when did that happen?JA: Mmm hmm. That was Thursday night at 7:00. I don’t remember the exact location but I followed Ryan there.

59:12DF: Oh, so you met him there?JA: Yeah. We crashed at his house for a little while and hung out and all that and then uh…went to the meeting and then slept a little bit longer because I was, you know, before I got on the road and

59:28DF: I had talked to… I can’t remember who it was up there in Utah. They called me and they said they knew Travis. They said that there was a meeting on Wednesday, or was it Thursday?JA: Uh…there is a luncheon on Wednesday. I didn’t go to that, though.

DF: That’s what they were talking about. JA: I don’t think I went to that. No, I went to some kind of meeting. It was at a restaurant. The restaurant owner’s name is Chris and he was recruited by Ryan.

59:52DF: Maybe that’s what they said. They said it’s kind of like a split up meeting. One day they have like a luncheon and then the other day is the meeting.JA: Yeah. I didn’t go to the lunch meeting. Um… it looks like the thing that happens is the same kind of deal when you sit in the restaurant instead of a business style meeting whereas the meeting you kind of sit for an hour and listen to a presentation for 45 minutes or however long it takes and uh…the luncheon you listen to the same thing but you get to eat lunch and it’s in a restaurant.

1:00:24DF: So did you ever stop by Vegas on the way out? JA: I went by Vegas… (laughing). No. (laughing) I go there once a year anyway for the Prepaid Legal thing and I’ve never been a gambler or lived that kind of lifestyle so no, I just drove through. I drove through um…I… I…went through Boulder City and I went through Vegas. I don’t remember all. I think Henderson, um…you know, and so I went up through, I think it was St. George. It took awhile. I was on the phone most of the night with Ryan at that time but um…you know, so he could keep me awake but I still had to pull over anyway. So…I mean…I’m not…I’m not shy about just pulling over wherever and sleeping in my car.

1:01:04DF: Oh, sounds dangerous. You need to be careful. JA: It is. It’s not the smartest thing. I realize that. Um… I usually park my car in a place where I can just drive off if I need to—if I have it backed out instead of um…you know, and I have the keys in the ignition so that I’m ready to go, but either way it’s still kind of safe. Anyone could break a window or something but…

1:01:23DF: Well in this day and age you still need some kind of protection, you’re driving alone…JA: I was thinking of that. I know, and I (laughs)…I just. I don’t know. Yes, I do, but

1:01:32DF: That’s not too difficult. Well, California I would say it’s a little more difficult because at least in Arizona you don’t even have to register any of your weapons. You just kind of…you just go buy them and that’s it.JA: Really?

1:01:43DF: Yeah.JA: I’ve actually looked into…I’ve actually looked into handguns um…because I have like…I have a list of like things that I’m really scared of that I’m trying to overcome and that’s one of ‘em and being in front of a public crowd is another, and I was shaking when I sang the National Anthem. There was only like 100 (?) people but I had to hold the microphone and my hands were shaking, so…Actually I got that from Travis because he would try to push yourself past your comfort zone and make yourself uncomfortable and do things that you’re scared of and uh…so…I…you know, I’ve been looking into that but handguns are expensive and, you know, it’s not really in my price range right now. It’s not…

1:02:22JA: Anyway, what was I saying with that? DF: Oh, no, we just discussed um…that, you know, the next two days after that you weren’t able to get a hold of him and…JA: Yeah.

DF: and thought about calling his friends and
1:02:33JA: Yeah, and that’s part of the reason I didn’t ‘cause I…I knew that…it didn’t feel like my place any longer to be like his mother and calling his friends …

1:02:43DF: So you knew about his trip in…Do you remember him telling you when he was leaving for his trip?JA: Yeah. Yeah. ‘Cause we had discussed dates of travel up here so…Um… I asked…He had said that he was leaving the 10th, and I didn’t know how long it would be or if he would come up here for 4 or 5 or 6 days but um I did know that the last we had discussed is his trip up here was going to be after Cancun before he came to see me sometime towards the end of June, and it would probably be a four day thing for me or a three day thing, but longer for him because he was traveling along the California coast and on up to Washington.

1:03:20DF: Okay. So he was going to leave the 10th and when was he going to come back?

1:03:30DF: Well, when did you first find out what happened to him?JA: Uh…Dan called me …

1:03:40DF: Dan who?JA: Dan Freeman. I’m sorry.

DF: Oh, Dan Freeman.
1:03:43JA: He called me um…Monday, I think it was Monday night, but it was more like…I think it was late Monday night—like 11 something, and he said, “Hey…how you doing? And I was like, “Dan!” because I had been thinking about him and I was planning my trip to Arizona and he was definitely on my list of people to visit. I love him and his family. Um…I used to go there every Sunday for dinner. Um…and…and I said, “Hey, how you doin’?” and he’s like, “Great!” and I said, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about making a trip out there,” and he’s like, “Yeah, I think you’re going to have to” and I was like, “Yeah! Yeah!” and then there was a pause, and he’s like, and then he’s like “Yeah, um…this is about Travis, and I was like, “Um…what?” You know, like
that’s never good, but…

1:04:22DF: Yeah, like the way he said that, yeah.JA: Yeah. So…but I didn’t think anything, at first. I mean, kind of, “Well, okay, what?” you know you don’t want to assume too soon, and he said, uh…he said, “They found him” and I was like “What does that mean?” “Well, I don’t know.” “Well, what do you mean you don’t know? What do you know?” “I don’t really know anything right now. I just know that Hyatt is at his house and Taylor Searle is at his house and the cops are there. And I was totally shocked. I don’t think that I said much. Um…I think that I …I just kept thinking maybe there’s a mistake. Maybe there’s a mistake. I wasn’t sure, and he didn’t really know, so I kept thinking maybe there was a mistake because he didn’t say anything. He didn’t give me any information so I thought…He said I was the first person that he thought of to call, but I think he called a couple of their leaders in Travis’ business first that were close to him. I don’t know who he called or what order but he called me and I kept thinking that maybe there was… made a mistake and I felt so helpless because I wasn’t there. I still lived there. Before I was like 10 minutes away. Not even 10. Maybe 7 minutes away. I could have just driven there but I found out and saw what’s going on. I just felt totally helpless.

1:05:40DF: What did you think about? I mean…The last time you had talked to him was what? Was it Monday or Wednesday? When was that?JA: I think it was um…Tuesday evening, I think. Yeah. Tuesday night.

1:05:53DF: Yeah. Did you think of, you know, what was going on the last time you talked to him…Did you try to get a hold of him after that?JA: Yes! Yeah. I did. I tried to get a hold of him um…I called him Tuesday night. Um… I called him subsequently and e-mailed him um…a couple times.

1:06:18DF: Well, is there anything else that you can remember or think of or any theories or anything that can help us?JA: I just…I just don’t know. Travis was a friend to everybody, and…

DF: Yeah.JA: and even when things were bad between us, he was always…he would give his last…He would give his last dollar…his last whatever. He um…He was selling me his BMW, and I was actually supposed to e-mail

DF: Yeah, you mentioned that. You kind of burned it out or something.JA: Yeah. Well, you said you found my check…in his house?

1:06:52DF: A check…Oh yeah…the check that you gave him for a payment.JA: Yeah. I made…Um…I guess like I…it’s just so dumb, like it seems so unimportant but I guess I need to know if that check (giggles) is going to be deposited any time soon?

1:07:07DF: No. No. After his death it can’t be deposited. So…JA: Really…?

DF: Yeah.
1:07:12JA: Okay. Well, then I’ll just consider that…whatever and I’ll still owe him the full balance until they figure out what they‘re going to do. Honestly, I trashed his car and he took it so well. Um…we were trying to figure out between my lawyers and his lawyers and Prepaid Legal and the insurance and U-Haul who was going to be held liable and, you know, it didn’t matter who was held liable, the fact was, that was a debt that I promised to pay and it’s just money and it isn’t worth, you know anything so um…I mean as far as him getting any (?) tensions over so um…He would never…He never had any doubt that I would pay him back but he was trying to do what was difficult because he was trying to um…work with the insurance um…to hold U-Haul accountable over how it had all gone down. He said the engine just blew up

1:07:57DF: Now the vehicle was still in his name, correct?JA: Yeah. He still has the… He was going to hold the title until I paid it, the balance in full.

DF: Okay. Did you guys have a written contract or anything?JA: I had yeah … what I did is I typed out an e-mail to him and I sent it and um…I just wrote back, “Just reply, I agree if you agree with this,” and he wrote back um…something about you didn’t say anything about you’re on your own insurance and so I said, Okay and amended that, I think, and then wrote back to him, and so that was our agreement. Our agreement was I pay him what I can each month until the balance is paid off, and I…I take care of general maintenance like oil changes and tires and things like that.

1:08:30DF: I don’t know what’s going on with that, with his car or anything or if it’s still at the shop, but his familyJA: I think it’s sitting there collecting dust um…DF: Yeah, his family is dealing with that because it’s still considered one of his assets and it goes in…

1:08:42JA: Oh…DF: you know, so…

(Camera pans to Tanisha and it is HEARTBREAKING to watch Tanisha as the courtroom listens to the tape recording of Jodi’s interview with Detective Flores below)

1:08:45JA: Yeah, and I was told, and I probably shouldn’t have done this, but I didn’t know who to get a hold of or who was doing what and I should have asked Dan first but I e-mailed his sister, Tanisha, on MySpace, and I was like, just sent her my condolences and the next paragraph I was like you know, it’s really hard but I owe Travis this amount of money and I know that at one point I’ll need to settle this debt…you know that kind of thing, but if you need to be in contact with me, this is my phone number and she didn’t get back to me and um…you know…

1:09:14DF: Well, you know when a death occurs like this everything has got to go to probate anyway…JA: Yeah, and I realize now but there’s a Mike Chapman the executor of his will and so I did get in touch with him yesterday and he said um…just give me all the information you have on that matter and then we’ll go from there and decide what’s going to happen.

1:09:34DF: He never gave you his password for his voice mail for his phone?JA: Uh…Nnnnno.

DF: Did you ever obtain it at any time or…?JA: Um…I…(pause). I didn’t have it but he had one PIN number that he always used and that was 1220.

1:09:48DF: Yeah.JA: Um…I don’t know if that was his voicemail PIN number, too. Oh, and he had a garage PIN that I have, too, which was different. His garage was … 1220 was his pin for his ATM because there were many times he gave me his card to go get money. Um…

1:10:01DF: Do you think that was his PIN for his phone as well?JA: It’s possible. I don’t know what kind of … I mean mine’s not password protected. Oh, mine is password protected. Mine before it wasn’t. Sorry. Um…the one for his um…ATM was (unintelligible – a person’s name) birthday. That’s how I remembered that, and then he gave me the garage PIN # which was 0187, and I think that was Chris Hughes’ birthday.

0:08
Clerk: Please stand for the jury.
Judge Sherry Stephens (JSS): Please be seated. The record will show the presence of the jury, the defendant and all Counsel. You may continue with cross examination.

0:21
Juan Martinez (JM): Ma’am, with regard to the killing of June 4 of 2008, it was you that committed that murder that killed Travis Alexander, correct?
JA: Yes.

0:31
JM: Nobody else was involved, right?
JA: That’s correct.

JM: And in terms of the … we don’t need any finger…any more of the fingerprint evidence that we have, you’re not disputing that the fingerprint evidence indicates that you were there, right?
JA: That’s right.

JM: Same thing with the DNA evidence. It was you that was there, right?
JA: Yes.

0:48
JM: Ma’am, after this shot rang out, you said that you went into a fog, right?
JA: Umm…yes. I began to go …things get foggy after that point.

1:03
JM: So, with regard to the camera. Can you tell us what happened to the camera?
JA: I don’t remember what I did with the camera.

JM: You acknowledge, though, that immediately prior to the, what you describe as the killing, the camera was right here in this area next to the tub, correct? (Juan is showing a diagram/floor plan of the bathroom)
JA: Umm…That’s the last place I saw it rolling. I don’t know if it got kicked around or what. I don’t know.

JM: But you acknowledge though that…take a look at Exhibit 162. First let’s look at the date and time. You acknowledge that this says, or was taken on June 4th, 2008 at 5:32:16, correct?
JA: Yes.

2:01
JM: What time was your understanding that the roommates got home?
JA: I didn’t know.

JM: So you didn’t…they…you don’t…did you even know if they were there?
JA: Umm… (pause) I don’t remember if they were there or not…at that time.

2:21
JM: Well, do you remember that one of the things that you told us under direct examination was that when there were roommates, the two of you had to be careful in your sexual umm….trysts so that as not to…umm…not awaken but, let the others know what was going on. Do you remember telling us that?
JA: That’s correct.

JM: So if this was going on, on that date, it would be fair to say based on what you believe that they were not home, right?
JA: This part of the day?

JM: Yes, this part.
JA: No, I don’t think that would have made a difference.

3:00
JM: What I’m saying though is during…when this happened, you believed that there were no roommates there, correct?
JA: I don’t know what time they got home. I don’t know.

JM: And you are wearing socks, right? (Photo on the screen – Juan is using his pen to point)
JA: Yes.

JM: And there is what appears to be a zipper on that foot, correct?
JA: Yes.

JM: If you look at this further, let’s orient ourselves. This is Mr. Alexander’s head, correct?
JA: Yes.

3:37
JM: Blood right there, right?
JA: Yes.

JM: And that’s his foot, correct?
JA: Yes.

JM: And given the way that the lights are in this particular photograph, the bathroom is in this direction, correct?
JA: Yes.

4:00
JM: And you would agree with me that if the camera, Exhibit 249, was last seen here… Do you see that?
JA: Yes.

JM: And things happened the way you say they happened and we now have this photograph that you were the one that moved that camera, right?
JA: Umm…it could have been us both. I don’t know…remember moving it.

4:35
JM: Well, based on what you tell us, there’s this gunshot that rings out, right?
JA: Yes.

4:41
JM: And then you don’t remember anything, right?
JA: I didn’t say that. I said it got foggy after that point. The point where I can’t remember anything is after he said…well, after he threatened my life.

4:51
JM: What’s that?
JA: After he threatened my life.

JM: But what is it that he said?
JA: ****ing kill you, *****.

4:56
JM: So after that, after ****ing kill you, *****, you don’t remember anything else, right?
JA: No, (pauses)…except the one thing that I described.

JM: Right! But you do remember though that as you ran down his hallway, you were not carrying the camera with you, right?
JA: Umm…(long pause) No, not the first time I ran down the hallway.

5:23
JM: Then you told us that the camera landed next to the tub, right?
JA: Yes.

5:27
JM: And so, if this photograph was snapped at the time that we’ve agreed that it snapped, and the camera the last time you see it is next to the tub, and then you describe what happens, that Mr. Alexander is down next to the tub, then it was you that moved that camera, right?

JM: With regard to Mr. Alexander, Ma’am, the last memory that you have of him is that he was down on the ground, correct?
JA: Umm…yes.

6:09
JM: And the last memory that you have of him is after you shot him, right?
JA: (licks lips) Yes.

6:16
JM: You never saw him walking around, did you?
JA: No, I didn’t.

JM: And so if you didn’t…assuming he didn’t get up and walk around, and assuming you did shoot him, and assuming that the camera is where you told us where it was, then this camera to take this photograph had to be moved, right?
JA: Umm….yeah. Yeah, it had to be moved.

6:42
JM: And you would acknowledge that you did the moving, right?
Nurmi: Objection. Calls for speculation. She has said over and over again she doesn’t remember.
JSS: Overruled. You may answer.
JA: Only under that theory – that would be right.

6:54
JM: Well, you see him right there, Ma’am, Mr. Alexander?
JA: Yes.

JM: Now take a look at it.
JA: I’ve already seen it.

JM: All right! Are you saying that the condition that Mr. Alexander is in Exhibit #162, and you were there, it’s your opinion that he, in that condition, could move the camera?
JA: I’m not saying that.

JM: And that camera ended up as we now know in a washing machine, right? You know that, right?
JA: Yes.

7:32
JM: You have this horrible incident that happens upstairs and the camera is being used for …to photograph Mr. Alexander, right?
JA: In the shower, yes.

JM: Right! And then the camera is dropped, and then we see the photographs here. You would acknowledge then, Ma’am, that under those set of facts it was you who put that camera in the washing machine?
JA: Yes. I guess…

7:58
JM: Because
JA: I didn’t…I don’t remember, but that would be logical.

8:10
JM: And you would acknowledge, Ma’am, that if you did that (pause), it would be an indication from you, at least you’re saying you’re in a fog and that you don’t remember, but it would be certainly an indication of your mental state back then that you picked up that camera and put it in the washing machine, wouldn’t it?
JA: Yes.

8:32
JM: And that would be an indication, Ma’am that you knew what happened?
JA: Umm…yes. I guess…I don’t know why it went in the washing machine.

8:44
JM: And Ma’am, we know that these were... this photograph was deleted from the camera, correct?
JA: Correct.

JM: We know that he’s dead after this, right?
JA: Umm…after this…yes.

JM: And we know as you just told us that there was nobody else there, that no roommates were there, right?
JA: Yes.

9:06
JM: So, if he’s dead, no roommates are there, this photograph is snapped, and it’s deleted, you’re the one that deleted it, aren’t you?
JA: That would make sense. I don’t remember deleting it.

9:18
JM: I’m not asking you if you remember now. I’m not asking that at all. I’m asking you, given the circumstances that we have here, you’re the one that deleted it, right?
JA: I would have to say, Yes.

9:30
JM: And, in fact deleting something is not a once…given your expertise in cameras and photography, deleting something is not a one-step process, right?
JA: That’s correct.

9:42
JM: And you were not familiar with his camera, were you?
JA: Umm…not prior to June 4th. Correct.

JA: And so what this required you to do is, and I understand that you’re going to say that you don’t remember, I’m not asking that, but wouldn’t you acknowledge then that it took some mechanical movement and thinking and by mechanical I mean fingers and some thought process on your part in order to delete these images, right?
Nurmi: Objection. Calls for speculation.
JSS: Overruled.
JA: I would agree with that.

10:21
JM: And you would agree that the deleting these items from the camera was not in any way necessary for you to do prior to leaving Mr. Alexander’s home?
JA: I don’t understand what you mean.
10:44
JM: Well, there is nothing…you acknowledge that there is nothing that was pressing or threatening about the camera that required you to delete these images, right?
JA: Umm… I don’t know what you mean by threatening…

11:08
JM: Well, in order for you to delete them, Ma’am, you have to view them, don’t you?
JA: Yes.

11:13
JM: And, if you view them, then the decision is made, and I know you’re going to say I don’t remember, but you acknowledge then that a decision is made by you to delete this photograph, right?
JA: There must have been. Yes.

11:27
JM: And you would agree then that if the police don’t find this photograph, that would be beneficial to you, wouldn’t it, in terms of your culpability involving Mr. Alexander’s death?
JA: I would not agree with that.

13:08
JM: And you would agree that to the right of that, it appears that there is a more, if you will, different pattern. In other words, the pattern on the right is not as dark as the one on the left, right?
JA: Umm…yes.

13:23
JM: And Ma’am you would agree that if you…if you had socks on, and we know that you did, and you were walking through blood, that this would be the kind of pattern that your socks would leave, right?
JA: I don’t know.
Nurmi: Objection. Foundation. There’s no knowledge that she was wearing socks at that time.
JSS: Overruled.
JA: I’m not sure.

13:47
JM: Take a look at Exhibit 130. (Close up photo of bloody hall in front of closet and still in bedroom looking down hall)
Do you see that?
JA: Yes.

13:57
JM: Would you agree then that we’ve seen the photograph and it’s Exhibit #162, and if we look at, take…this is Exhibit 162, do you see it?
JA: Yes.

14:10
JM: And you told us that to this end over here is the bathroom. Over here, do you see that?
JA: Yes.

JM: And if we look at this Exhibit which is 130, you would agree that the bathroom is in this direction, correct?
JA: Yes.

14:36
JM: So that if his foot that we were looking at would be right about where my pen is or right in front of that door, right?
JA: Yes.

14:42
JM: Now the door that’s behind it is the door that you claim was the door that he was banging his head on back on August 7th, of 200…I’m sorry in August of 2007, right?
JA: Yes.

14:54
JM: And you would agree, Ma’am, that if this is the pattern that we have here, and his head is in this direction, as we see it in the picture, then because of the way the blood is flowing down, this is where his head was resting, right here.
JA: I think. I don’t know. I guess.

15:17
JM: He would not be the person that would be leaving these marks here to the right, would he, because he wasn’t standing, was he?
JA: Objection. She’s already said she has no memory. It would call for speculation.
JSS: Sustained.

JM: 162. Is he standing there, Ma’am?
JA: No.

JM: Would you acknowledge that based on everything that you know, he’s not going to stand after that?

Nurmi: Calls for speculation. Objection.
JSS: Overruled.
JA: Umm… I would…I would be very inclined to agree with that.

15:50
JM: You told us Ma’am that there was just this shooting when he was coming at you from the bathroom, right?
JA: Yes.

JM: I’m sorry. From the closet, my mistake, correct?
JA: Yes.

16:07
JM: And as he came at you, you showed us the pose, and then according to you the shooting happened, right?
JA: Yes.

16:18
JM: You would agree, Ma’am, that the shooting where it occurred is not near what we are …what is pictured in Exhibit 98, correct? (Photo of bloody sink)
JA: Yes.

16:29
JM: You weren’t bleeding…even though you said that you had an injury to your left right finger, you weren’t bleeding that profusely to put all this blood here, right?
JA: Umm…well my left ring finger wasn’t bleeding at all, so…

16:46
JM: So the answer is, No?
JA: That’s correct.

16:48
JM: That is not your blood, right?
JA: No, I don’t think it is.

16:52
JM: And again, based on what we know…on what YOU know about this case and based on the fact that you acknowledge you’ve done the shooting and acknowledging that that was your foot in this photograph, you would have to agree that a person would have to be standing, or Mr. Alexander would have to be standing, for that blood to be placed there, right?
Nurmi: Objection. Calls for speculation. She’s not a splatter expert.
JSS: Overruled.
JA: I would think. (playing/moving glasses around). Yes, I would think that.

17:28
JM: Ma’am, one of the things that happened or that was found on the body was a glass. Are you aware of that?
JA: Yes.

17:39
JM: Now before the murder there was no glass up in the bathroom, right?
JA: There was. It was under the sink.

17:50
JM: It was under the sink then, right?
JA: Yes.

17:52
JM: So then you would agree that if it was under the sink before the murder, and it was found on top of him after the murder, you would agree that you were the person, you would acknowledge, that you were the person that went underneath the sink, got the glass, correct?
JA: I would acknowledge that.

18:15
JM: And you would acknowledge that you used that glass to try to clean up or throw it on the floor of that bathroom?
JA: I don’t know what I did with it.

18:28
JM: If there were lots of water in the bathroom after the killing, for example, if you take a look at Exhibit #118, do you see that? The water marks here? (Photo of the hallway, with a box of copy paper on the floor that is water/blood saturated at the bottom of the box)
JA: Yes.

18:44
JM: You would acknowledge that these water marks in red-colored blood or what appears to be blood, you would acknowledge that you’re the person that created those marks, correct?
JA: Yes.

19:01
JM: And you would also acknowledge, Ma’am, that these reddish spots here (another photo of tile floor, blood pools, and photo copy box on floor) are Mr. Alexander’s blood, right?
JA: Yes.

19:12
JM: Which would indicate that he was in that area bleeding, correct?
JA: Yes.

19:21
JM: And Exhibit 125 shows us the relationship between the closet to the right, correct?
JA: Yes.

JM: The closet to the left, correct?
JA: Yes.

JM: And the end of the hallway into the bedroom, right?
JA: Mmm, yes.

19:44
JM: And Ma’am, you would agree that we’ve now seen that there was stain, 128, here, do you see that, and it’s concentrated there, do you see that?
JA: Yes.

20:05
JM: And we’ve heard that it was nowhere else in the top floor in that bedroom, and we also know that you were the only one walking around in 162 wearing socks, do you see that?
JA: Yes.

20:22
JM: You would acknowledge, Ma’am, that prior to walking out from here and leaving, you would acknowledge that you took those socks off, correct?
JA: I don’t know.

20:39
JM: Well, you would acknowledge that there is no blood anywhere else other than in this area here, do you see that?
JA: Yes.

20:45
JM: So you would acknowledge that if you did have blood on your socks and there was water on the floor, and you were walking in it, you would acknowledge that there may be, based on whatever experience you have, there may be other blood throughout wherever it was that you stepped?

JM: You would acknowledge that you took your socks off before you walked into the bedroom?
JA: I don’t know.
JM: …because you knew…I’m not saying that you remember it, because you knew that they had blood on them and you didn’t want to get the rest of the bedroom dirty
Nurmi: Objection again. Calls for speculation. She said she doesn’t remember even removing her socks.
JSS: Sustained.

JM: Ma’am, you did leave the house though, didn’t you?
JA: Yes.

21:48
JM: You would acknowledge that you left, right?
JA: Yes.

21:52
JM: And you would acknowledge that there is not record anywhere in Arizona of you ever being in Arizona other than this killing, right?
JA: No, I disagree with that.

22:03
JM: Well, are their receipts, for example, from the places that you filled up with gas?
JA: No, at one time there would have been surveillance video, but no.

22:12
JM: You think there was surveillance video. Okay! Umm…Isn’t it true, Ma’am, that as you drove out of Arizona, one of the things that you did was that you used the gasoline in those three cans to fill up …to put in your car.

Nurmi: Objection. Mischaracterizes her testimony. She said she had two cans.
JSS: Overruled.
JA: Umm….will you repeat that? I’m sorry.

22:37
JM: You would acknowledge, Ma’am, that in Arizona, you filled up the car from the gas …the three gas cans that were in your possession filled with gas.
JA: I didn’t have three gas cans in my possession.

22:53
JM: Ma’am, do you remember in Pasadena that there were three separate transactions. Do you remember that?
JA: Yes.

23:00
JM: There was one at the pump, do you remember that?
JA: Yes.

23:03
JM: There was also one inside the store, if you will, do you remember that one?
JA: Yes.

23:11
JM: For approximately 10 gallons, do you remember that, right?
JA: Yes.

23:13
JM: And then there was another transaction inside the store. Do you acknowledge that, right?
JA: Yeah. That was the two gallons or something?

23:21
JM: Right! 2.7 gallons, right?
JA: Yes.

23:26
JM: There were three transactions in Pasadena, correct?
JA: Yes.

23:30
JM: You acknowledge that there are two gas cans that Mr. Brewer gave you, correct?
JA: Yes.

23:35
JM: And you acknowledge that you bought one gas can from Wal-Mart, right?
JA: Yes.

23:38
JM: I understand that you say that you returned it, but you did have at least at some point you acknowledge have three gas cans, right?
JA: Yes, until Salinas, I did.

23:50
JM: Pardon?
JA: In Salinas, I did.

23:52
JM: And so the gas that you had in those gas cans you placed in your car in Arizona, right?
JA: No. I didn’t need to do that.

24:02
JM: Well, Ma’am, do you remember that you told us on direct examination that the next time that you could remember anything was when you were way out in the middle of the desert?
JA: That’s correct.

24:16
JM: And do you remember the testimony of Detective Larry Gladdish who indicated that the phone call to Mr. Alexander’s telephone was 57 miles north of Kingland, do you remember that?
JA: Umm….no, but okay, I’ll assume he said that.

24:29
JM: But you do remember that you testified that you were out in the middle of the desert, right?
JA: Um…yes, I did.

24:39
JM: And do you remember that you said that you stopped, right?
JA: Mmmm, yes.

24:44
JM: And do you remember that you said, ‘well, I got rid of the gun,’ right?
JA: Yes.

24:49
JM: So you would acknowledge, Ma’am, that even though immediately after this killing happened, you say you went into a fog. Do you remember saying that?
JA: Uh…I was in a fog, yes.

25:03
JM: You were in a fog, right? And one of the things that we know from your own admission is that there was a gun that was involved, right?
JA: Yes.

25:13
JM: That’s what you used to shoot him, right?
JA: Yes.

25:17
JM: And so this gun you tell us, you took it out to the desert, didn’t you?
JA: Yes.

25:25
JM: You were the one that removed it from the house, right?
JA: Yes.

25:29
JM: If you weren’t…if you didn’t know what was going on, if you were in a fog, Ma’am, which means that you don’t know the status of your current events, or the status of what’s going on, would you agree that there would be no need to take the gun if you were unaware of your status?
JA: I would not agree with that.

25:56
JM: Even though you’re in a fog, you…there’s a decision, a knowing decision, a voluntary movement that is made to take the gun on your part, right?
JA: I think you’re getting fog confused. My memory was in a fog. I don’t remember what happened after those things.

26:15
JM: I’m not asking if you remember that. Please! That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking whether you acknowledge that you removed the gun from the crime scene.
JA: Yes.

26:27
JM: And you do acknowledge that if you’re in a fog, you’re in a fog about everything, not just certain, specific things, right?
JA: I don’t know.

26:40
JM: Well, it’s your fog!
JA: (silence) Is that a question?

26:46
JM: Yes, it is a question.
JA: What is it? (playing with glasses again)

26:48
JM: It’s your fog, isn’t it?
JA: Yes.

26:51
JM: And with regard to this particular fog that you are in, why would you even think of taking the gun unless you really knew what was going on?
JA: (Thinking) I could only speculate because I don’t remember.

27:16
JM: If you were in a fog and you had…didn’t know what you were doing, why take the gun, Ma’am?
Nurmi: Objection. Asked and answered. Argumentative.
JSS: Overruled.
JA: I don’t remember….(pause) taking the gun… I remember throwing the gun.

27:34
JM: All right! Throwing the gun. If you remember throwing the gun, you remember where the gun came from, don’t you?
JA: I recognized it as Travis’ gun. Yes.

27:45
JM: I know you say that it’s Travis’ gun, but shortly before embarking on this trip to Mesa, Arizona, on May 28, 2008, your grandfather had a 25 caliber gun taken during a burglary, right?
JA: Yes.

28:01
JM: And you knew about that, right?
JA: I found out after I got back into town.

28:12
JM: You did know on May 28, 2008 that there was a burglary (JA playing with her glasses again) at your grandfather’s house, correct?
JA: Yes.

28:19
JM: And you’re telling us on June 4th, or after the murder, you stopped at the side of the road, right?
JA: Yes.

28:30
JM: And according to you, you have one of the implements that was used to kill Mr. Alexander, correct?
JA: Yes.

JM: If you didn’t think that you had done anything wrong, and you were in this FOG, that you weren’t thinking, why get rid of it? Why get rid of it?
JA: I never said I didn’t think I done any…didn’t do anything wrong.

28:58
JM: Oh, so you acknowledge then that you believe that you did something wrong with regard to Mr. Alexander then, right?
JA: I believe that…

29:06
JM: Yes or No?
JA: something really bad had happened

JM: Yes or No, Ma’am?
JA: Umm…I’m not…how did you word that again?

29:12
JM: Do you believe that you did something wrong with regard to Mr. Alexander?
JA: Yes.

29:19
JM: And that belief that you had was with you on the side of the road to the point you got rid of the gun, right?
JA: Well, I…I just threw it, so yeah.

29:35
JM: You did get rid of the gun, right?
JA: Yes.

29:41
JM: And this knowing that you had done something wrong was preceded by your removing the gun from the crime scene, right?
JA: Yes.

29:56
JM: So you would agree then that at the crime scene, you knew that what you had done was wrong, correct?
JA: (thinks) I would say that would be accurate, but I don’t remember.

30:10
JM: And you were trying to alter the crime scene, weren’t you?
JA: It appears that way.

30:14
JM: Well, no! Based on what you know, there was an altering of the crime scene, wasn’t there?
JA: Yes.

30:21
JM: The gun was taken, right?
JA: Yes.

30:25
JM: And we know that you took it, right?
JA: Yes.

JM: We also know that uh…there was no knife that was found up in the bathroom area, right?
JA: Yes

30:39
JM: So we know that. You took it, right?
JA: I don’t remember having the knife at all afterward.

JM: But there was no knife up there, right?
JA: Not… I haven’t heard any testimony about that so…

31:20
JM: And you would acknowledge that that stabbing was with a knife, right?
JA: Yes

JM: And according to your version of events, you would acknowledge that that stabbing was after the shooting, according to you, right?
JA: eh….yes… I don’t remember…

JM: I’m…I’m not asking you if you remember, Ma’am. I’m asking if you acknowledge that it would be you that did it. Correct?
JA: Yes.

JM: And you would acknowledge that a lot of the stab wounds, and if you want we can count them together, including the ones to the head or to the back of the head…to the back of the torso, correct?
JA: Okay…

JM: Well, if he has already been shot according to you, and he’s facing away from you, how could he possibly be any threat to you?
JA: (Long pause. Hand still covering face/eyes.) I could only guess. I don’t know what you’re asking me…

32:23
JM: Well, with regard to the…you were here when the medical examiner testified about the wound to the throat, do you remember that?
JA: Yes.

JM: With regard to that wound, Ma’am, you would acknowledge that that was, in terms of the stab wounds, you would acknowledge that that was the last wound in the sequence of events?

Nurmi: Objection. She said she doesn’t remember.
JSS: Overruled. That wasn’t…

Nurmi: (interrupts JSS) how can she acknowledge the sequence of the stabs if she doesn’t know when …doesn’t have any memory of them?
JSS: That wasn’t the question. Overruled. You may answer the question.
JA: Are you talking about his testimony?

JM: Yes.
JA: I disagree with the sequence of events.

33:36
JM: Would you agree that you’re the person who actually slit Mr. Alexander’s throat from ear to ear?
JA: Yes.

33:51
JM: Would you also agree that you’re the individual that stabbed him in the upper torso?
JA: (Same hiding face scenario. Hesitation…) Yes.

34:07
JM: And, you’re doing all this to him according to your version of events, you’re doing this to this individual AFTER you have already shot him, right?
JA: Yes.

34:24
JM: Correct?
JA: I believe so.

JM: Well, no…do you remember you previously talking to us about how he was coming at you and he was this horrible man with his mean face. Do you remember telling me that?
JA: Yes…(sniffling into her tissue, crying) I didn’t say he was horrible…

34:40
JM: Okay, thank you for correcting me, but do you remember telling us that he was a mean man?
JA: (Takes another Kleenex) Not today…

JM: Well, previously. Previously you did say that he was a mean man, correct?
JA: I think I did, yes.

34:54
JM: And on this particular occasion you told us that he was cursing at you, right?
JA: Yes.

35:00
JM: and that he threw you down, right?
JA: Yes.

35:05
JM: And he chased you down, right?
JA: Yes.

35:12
JM: And this is the individual that you shot first, right?
JA: I didn’t know if I shot him, I just…the gun went off…

35:21
JM: The gun went off…, right? You can at least acknowledge that, correct?
JA: Yes.

35:25
JM: That’s something that you did hear, correct?
JA: Yes.

JM: Ma’am, one of the things that we also know is that there was this rope that was involved earlier in the evening, or in the day at 1:00, do you remember telling us about that at about 1:30?
JA: Yes.

35:46
JM: And it involved this sexual interlude with you and Mr. Alexander, right?
JA: Yes.

35:52
JM: And you told us that it went behind the headboard…
JA: Yes.

35:58
JM: The police did not find any rope there. Correct?
JA: Um…yes.

36:06
JM: You…took…that…rope…, didn’t you?
JA: Yes.

36:11
JM: Why would you take that rope, Ma’am, if you were in the fog?
JA: I don’t know. I don’t remember taking it.

36:19
JM: The rope, according to you, didn’t have anything to do with the killing, did it?
JA: (Same scenario) No…not that I remember.

36:27
JM: Well…but you acknowledge that there was this rope that was taken, right?
JA: Yes.

36:36
JM: Don’t you also acknowledge that you were the one that threw it away?
JA: Yes.

JM: So then you would acknowledge that you’re the person that took it, right?
JA: Um…yes.

36:47
JM: And even though you were in this fog as you call it, you knew as you’re walking in this fog to go looking around for this particular rope as you say, right?
JA: Um…I don’t know.

37:01
JM: Well,…you did say that you did take it, right?
JA: Yes.

37:07
JM: And, in fact, do you remember where you threw it away, right?
JA: Um…I think it was in a dumpster.

37:15
JM: Right! You said you threw it away in a dumpster, right?
JA: Yeah.

37:22
JM: What…other than that it would show that you had been there, Ma’am, why take the rope and then get rid of it?
JA: I don’t know. Maybe for that very reason. I don’t know.

37:34
JM: So you did take the rope. You also changed clothing, right?
JA: Um…(uncovers face, looking down, hand on side of her face showing wonky finger)…I think I did. I don’t…I…

JM: Well, you said that you pulled off on the side of a road in the desert, right?
JA: Yes.

37:48
JM: And that you said that you went to the trunk of the car, right?
JA: Yes.

37:52
JM: Isn’t it true, Ma’am that that’s where you claimed to have the gas cans?
JA: That’s where they were.

37:57
JM: Pardon?
JA: Yes, that’s where they were.

38:00
JM: And, so the gas cans and the gas were in the back with the water, right?
JA: Yes. A case of water and my suitcase.

38:06
JM: And you found that you had some blood on you, correct?
JA: Yes.

JM: And back then that was at the time that there was this stop or security checkpoint before Hoover Dam, right?
JA: I pulled over before that…

38:23
JM: Right! You were not so much in a fog that you didn't know that the checkpoint existed, right?
JA: I did not know that the checkpoint existed.

JM: Well, you just told me that was when the checkpoint was there, do you remember telling me that just now?
JA: I came to know of its existence when I drove up to it, or there was a sign or something.

38:45
JM: But, conveniently, or to your advantage, you stopped the car before you got to the checkpoint, right?
JA: Uhh….a long time before the checkpoint when I called Ryan, or texted somebody, or Leslie, or someone…

39:00
JM: So the answer is yes, correct?
JA: Yes.

39:04
JM: And one of the things that you did was that you got the water from the trunk, right?
JA: Um…yes.

39:28
JM: Right! And you put the bloody clothes that you had on you took those off, right?
JA: Um…I think I did.

39:37
JM: Well, do you remember testifying that you threw them away, along with the gun.
JA: I don’t recall throwing the clothes out in the desert, but…

39:46
JM: But you did change in anticipation of the checkpoint, right?
JA: No. I didn’t know there was a checkpoint until I reached it.

39:54
JM: Well, you will acknowledge that this changing and washing of hands occurred before you got to the checkpoint whether you knew or not that the checkpoint was there?
JA: That’s correct.

40:07
JM: And you would agree that it was to your advantage to be…to have clean hands and clothing that is not soiled with blood if you’re going to go through a checkpoint, correct?
JA: That wasn’t my line of thinking but I would agree with what you said.

40:25
JM: And then you are making some calls at that time, aren’t you?
JA: Prior to the checkpoint, yes.

40:32
JM: You have the…I guess the umm….ability to say ‘I’m going to look through the car to see if I can find my charger, right?’
JA: Um…(pause) I wasn’t looking for my charger, but I looked through the car.

40:48
JM: You were looking through the car then when you pulled over, right?
JA: Yes.

40:52
JM: And when you pulled over you found the charger, according to you, underneath the seat, right?
JA: Yes. (licking lips)

40:58
JM: And that allowed you to make some telephone calls, right?
JA: Not right away ‘cause there was no reception.

41:05
JM: Right! But you were…you made some telephone calls before you reached the Arizona/Nevada border, right?
JA: Yes. I turned my phone on and it just took awhile to place a call because the call kept dropping.

41:16
JM: Right! It was before the checkpoint, right?
JA: Yes.

41:21
JM: And while you were driv…were you driving at that time when the telephone was in a position to make calls out?
JA: I believe…yes.

41:34
JM: So when it first came on, so that it had the ability for calls to be made, how far was it to the checkpoint?
JA: It felt like an hour.

41:45
JM: It felt like an hour?
JA: I think…

JM: Do you know where Cayman (?) is?
JA: No.

41:53
JM: And when this telephone came on, you started to make telephone calls, right?
JA: I attempted to. I was only able to send, I think text messages, ‘cause the signal was…

42:15
JM: And you were…even though you were in this fog that you were telling us about you were able to call him and make up a lie, right?
JA: Um…the fog that I was referring to relates to my memory.

JM: Right! It relates to your memory so you…you could have told Mr. Burns that you were with Mr. Alexander, but you didn’t, right?
JA: That’s right.

JM: Instead you made up a story, didn’t you?
JA: Yes.

42:41
JM: So this fog that you’re talking about, it wasn’t so heavy that it prevented you from thinking and making up a lie.
JA: Um…(pause) yes, that’s right.

42:58
JM: You made up a lie that you had lost your charger, right?
JA: Yes.

JM: You made up a lie that you had gone to a gas station to get the charger, right?
JA: No. That’s not what I told him.

43:14
JM: And so Mr. Burns if full of crap when he tells us that?
JA: No. He just has a poor memory on some things.

43:20
JM: And you know that based on that one limited time that you met with him in West Jordan, Utah, correct?
JA: No. I know that from all his inconsistent statements to police.

43:35
JM: But you only met him one time, right?
JA: Um…

43:40
JM: …as a romantic interest?
JA: Yes.

JM: And so you also told him that you got lost, right?
JA: Umm…(pauses) I did say that. I did say that.

43:53
JM: That was also not true, correct?
JA: Um…(pauses) well, technically it was but not for the reason I was telling him.

44:02
JM: No, you were actually…Ma’am, you knew where you were going. You were going over to Mr. Alexander’s house. You knew that, right?
JA: No. I got lost after leaving his house is what I mean so technically I did get lost, but that’s not why I told Ryan that.

44:14
JM: Even though there’s this technicality, are you telling us that when you told Mr. Burns that you got lost that you were clear with him that the reason you got lost was that you killed Mr. Alexander and you had been driving and you had been lost that way, or did you tell him that you got lost a different way?
JA: I…don’t remember what way. I think I…made up something stupid and I certainly didn’t tell him I got lost about Travis. I told him I got lost

JM: Right!
JA…to deceive him.

44:45
JM: So even in this fog, you still have the ability to think…to protect yourself, right?
JA: Um…yes.

44:58
JM: And the other thing that you did is you attempted to call Matthew McCartney, right?
JA: Yes.

45:01
JM: And you also attempted to call Mr. Brewer, right?
JA: Um…(pause) I don’t remember. I might have …

JM: One of the other things that you did, and you know we were talking about protecting yourself, one of the other things that you did is that you immediately, almost immediately when you said you were coming out of this fog, one of the first things that you do is you try to divert attention away from you so that the police won’t think you had anything to do with this killing, right?
JA: Yes (Head down pose)

45:36
JM: And this fog that you were under that you were telling us about is not so deep that it stops you from fabricating or attempting to fabricate evidence, right?
JA: Um…(Pause) that would be correct.

45:55
JM: And it’s not so deep that, according to you, you can stay on the telephone and know the prompts so that you can get the telephone message just right, according to you, right?
JA: Well, just so that I wasn’t crying in the message, yes.

JM: Right! But you want the message to be just so... so that it sounds natural, right?
JA: Yeah. As natural as possible.

46:19
JM: Right, and you went to great lengths to do that, according to you, right?
JA: Yes.

46:23
JM: And the reason that you went to great lengths to do that was that…so that if there was any suspicion it wouldn’t be drawn to you, correct?
JA: Um…not immediately. That’s…that was the point, yes.

46:40
JM: Well, no! You made the call knowing the reason why you made the call, right?
JA: Shakes head affirmatively up and down before responding, Yes.

46:49
JM: If you really weren’t wanting to fabricate evidence you would have just left whatever message instead of worrying about crying or whatever it was that you were worried about, right?
JA: That’s right.

47:01
JM: And so you called Mr. Alexander and you left him a message, right?
JA: Yes.

47:08
JM: Let’s play it and hear what you say.
JA: (Audible and visual inhale)

Hey! What’s going on? It’s almost midnight. Uh, anyway, it’s about the time you are starting to gear up. I know that Leslie already called you. I already talked to her so, uh…you can call her back if you want, but it’s not necessary. Umm…my phone died so I wasn’t getting back to anybody. Umm…and what else? Oh, and I drove 100 miles in the wrong direction – over 100 miles, thank you very much! So, yeah! Remember New Mexico? (Jodi clears her voice twice) It was a lot like that, only you weren’t here to protect me from going into the three digits, so fun, fun! I’ll tell you all about that later. Um…also, we were talking about (Jodi clears her throat twice) when we were talking about your upcoming travels my way I was looking at the May calendar. Duh! So, I’m all confused. Um…but Heather and I are going to see Othello** on July 1st and we would love for you to come…to accompany us. Um…I don’t know when (sounds like: Team Freedom Division/Dominion?) is though, but you know it’s on the list so, so we can do um…we can do Shakespeare, Crater Lake and the coast. So, if you can make it. If not, we’ll just do the coast and uh… Crater Lake, but let me know, and I will talk to you soon. Bye!
[End of Message]

**(Jodi invited Travis to go with her and Heather to see “Othello” – which is ironically about a man who murders his wife who he thought was cheating on him)

JM: That’s you, correct?
JA: Correct.

JM: And that’s you lying on the message, right?
JA: Yes.

48:30
JM: You were telling, or you were leaving the message for Mr. Alexander indicating that you got lost, fun, fun!....right?
JA: Yes.

48:40
JM: That’s not true, right?
JA: That’s not true.

48:44
JM: Uh…asking him, or talking to him about coming up to visit you up in Yreka and doing some of the things that you mentioned. You know that’s not true, also, right?
JA: No, that was our plan before June 4th.

49:01
JM: That was the plan before June 4th, but you’re talking to him, or leaving the message for him indicating that, you know you’re sorry you couldn’t stop by but you guys can make up for it up in …when he comes up to visit you, right?
JA: Yes.

49:18
JM: That’s a lie!
JA: Yes.

49:22
JM: And all of these lies, Ma’am, are meant for your benefit so that you can escape responsibility?
JA: I don’t see how that’s to my benefit, but I don’t know what you mean by benefit, but yes, so I could escape…whatever…for the time being.

49:41
JM: Well, now you keep saying for the time being. You would have been happy to avoid the consequences for a lifetime, wouldn’t you?
JA: Um…I can’t say would be happy, but I don’t know…

50:05
JM: Well, you didn’t go to the police with any of your information ever until they contacted you, right?
JA: (pause…thinking). Um…I think I initiated the contact.

50:17
JM: Oh, so you’re saying when you called the police you told them the truth?
JA: No. I’m not saying that.

50:25
JM: You would have been satisfied to avoid any responsibility for the killing of Mr. Alexander, wouldn’t you?
JA: (licks lips) I don’t know if satisfied is the word. Probably relieved for the time being.

50:38
JM: Okay. You would have been relieved to avoid any consequences for the killing of Mr. Alexander, correct?
JA: (Pause) Umm…that was…that was my goal…

50:54
JM: Right!
JA: …that day.

JM: And that’s why you left this message that we heard on Exhibit #365, right?
JA: Yes. Well, that’s part of the reason.

51:04
JM: Well, that was THE main reason, wasn’t it?
JA: Yes.

51:08
JM: I mean…there would be really no other reason to leave a dead man a telephone call, would there?
JA: I probably wouldn’t have done that but Leslie said she um…called his phone asking for me ‘cause I was missing and …then I thought, well, maybe I should … do something about that, and that’s why I did it. So, ultimately (she looks at Juan now) that was the main reason. (and then looks back down again). Yes.

51:32
JM: So you’re looking to Leslie Udy as the reason why you left that telephone call, Ma’am?
JA: No. I said the other…to avoid whatever was the ultimate reason…

51:43
JM: Well, you gave me a reason involving Leslie Udy right now, didn’t you?
JA: Yes. I wouldn’t have thought to leave him a message if she hadn’t…if I hadn’t talked to her prior to leaving that message, and then she said that, umm, we’ve been calling and we called Travis and left a message and that kind of thing.

51:59
JM: But she told you that, Ma’am, know…believing that he was still alive, didn’t she?
JA: Yes.

52:03
JM: You knew better though.
JA: Um…I think I did.

52:08
JM: And so you didn’t have to follow her advice, right?
JA: She didn’t give me any advice.

52:13
JM: Well, you didn’t have to follow her words, did you?
JA: Um…I didn’t have to but it reminded me of his cell phone and that’s…

52:24
JM: But it looks like…
JA: I chose to do it (looking at Juan). I chose to… if you’re going down the route saying Leslie made me do that, I’m not saying that.

52:32
JM: I’m not saying Leslie made you do it. I’m saying you’re looking again in a personal relationship in an issue that is absolutely yours to own, you’re looking for somebody else, saying, ‘Leslie Udy, I talked to her, and as a result of talking to Leslie Udy, that’s why I left this.

Nurmi: (while seated) Objection. Argumentative.
JSS: Sustained.

52:56
JM: Ma’am, Leslie Udy really didn’t have anything to do with that call, right?
JA: I made the call. I just got the idea after speaking with her.

53:05
JM: So, she was the reason why you had the idea then?
JA: (Pause) Um…(longer pause) that … kind of…I guess…

53:17
JM: And according to you, if it had not been for Leslie Udy, you wouldn’t have thought about it, right?
JA: I probably might have thought about it eventually but maybe not. I don’t know. I just know that I thought of it after she mentioned she had left a message on his voice mail.

53:35
JM: And so because of this outside stimulus, you decided to leave this message, right? It was your decision?
JA: It was my decision.

JM: Umm…even though you told us before that he guilted you, that really wasn’t the reason that you went, you wanted to go, correct?
JA: (audible sigh) Part of me did and part of me didn’t. Obviously, the bigger part of me did ‘cause I went, and he did guilt me, and ultimately still was my decision.